


Appendices

by Arcanista



Series: Holding Pattern [14]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Not a Story, Revision Notes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-12 01:41:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5649064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arcanista/pseuds/Arcanista
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Revision notes for Holding Pattern. Not a story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Appendix A: How To Be Human

Okay, so let's talk about what we're doing here. At roughly 73,000 words (the AO3 wordcount is going to be off because of the extras, but prior to putting this up, it counts at 73,768 words), Holding Pattern is a complete novel. Specifically, it's the first draft of a complete novel. Everything's been casually proofread and starting about halfway through (my reader hadn't beaten the game prior to then) everything was read by an extra set of eyes but that's about it.

I always like to say I don't redraft unless it's with the intention of money changing hands, and while that's true, I've also never pulled off a continuous work of this length before. So what I'm gonna be doing is going through the series and disassembling it into component pieces. I'm not going to be calling out line- or copy-edits unless a sentence or w/e is pretty egregiously bad. I _will_  be talking about wtf all those obscure graphs mean.

I'm doing this in public because enough people seemed interested in how the sausage is made and shit, for all the pithy writing advice out there (treat your writer like a delicate forest creature, shy and skittish, etc, etc, etc), you don't usually see a lot of this sort of really practical thing, at least not this extensively. And there's reasons for that, but hell, I've got an unsaleable complete work, why not? I need the practice doing this, and maybe it'll help someone else.

Obviously, I'm gonna be spoiling the whole work throughout this.

* * *

So, Human in specific. I'm going to save talking about Holding Pattern as a whole until Nobody Home for one very specific reason: this fic is entirely standalone. I wrote it in about an hour, maybe two, with no intention of ever coming back to it.

I've told this story before, but it's important to this piece in specific, so I'll tell it again.

So I beat true pacifist and let the game sit for about a week, a week and a half. Loved the game, didn't really have any plans to do fanwork. Dragon Age: Inquisition: Trespasser had come out fairly recently and that actually gave enough setting information to twinge my interest. I'd been working on a Solas/Lavellan horror story out of frustration at a lot of the popular ways that subset of the fandom treated the character. And so on and so forth.

But I was resolved to play through genocide in Undertale-- I was fully spoiled as to the general details of the route by then, _but still_ \-- so I fired the game up. As a joke, I named the fallen child Jerry. And I cut my way through the ruins. I was pretty much prepared. I'd never killed Toriel at all before so I was kind of compromised but, you know, I knew what I was getting into, I could do it.

What I didn't know was how much Snowdin Forest changes in genocide. It put me on edge. But I was fine. I was fine with Vaguely Ominous Sans, I was fine with Papyrus' increasing frustration. I knew there was something about a hug coming up. I could deal.

I could not deal. Something about Papyrus' desperate still-believing-in-you, the absolute silence in the fight screen, the immediate mercy. It was like three in the morning. I was in a voice chat with some buddies who were playing, of all things, Dragon Age Inquisition multiplayer. I muted myself and I started crying. Not wet at the eyes with maybe a couple rolling down my cheek like when I see that Discovery Channel ad. Not 'oh it's gotten dusty in here', not even 'dammit, stop cutting onions'. This was grade-A just-got-dumped ugly crying. All told it went on for like forty-five minutes.

At some point during all this I fumbled for the mercy button, followed Papyrus back to Snowdin, did the friend date, then quit out of the game and overwrote the save from my pacifist backup.

Around then I was just struck by the image of that particular Frisk doing just that: following Papyrus home, and never leaving.

A couple days later, I went and I started the game back up and I finished the job. I used the name that I've named video game main characters for the past fifteen years or so (Arin, after a roleplay character that never got off the ground). I cheated like a motherfucker-- it wasn't until much later that I actually beat Sans mostly legit (I filled my inventory with pies)-- but I went and I completed genocide and I was left with further questions about that scenario I'd imagined.

I could go back to my tumblr to check the sequence of events for certain, but I think it was failed genocide-I wrote Human-completed genocide-I started the rest.

So if there's a reason Human feels different in a lot of ways from the rest of the series, not just length, it was coming out of a very different place. It's probably still the strongest individual piece, and it is the only one that can legitimately stand by itself.

It also means that I'll have less to talk about here with relation to how it pins forward to the rest of the series. If it feels less planned right now, it's because it was entirely unplanned. Future commentary should be less front-loaded.

* * *

This fuckin' gif. This was a late addition. I think I edited it in after Hysteresis? I think that's when I finalized the header stuff and the summary and the pre-story game timeline and all that, anyway. This thing took more time to do than any of the other extras. I had to literally start up a new game, play genocide-- and yes, I killed Toriel four times here-- all the way up to Papyrus, then fire up gifcam. Then I had to somehow convey a struggle for control through the medium of a heart-shaped cursor. Then I had to hand-edit something like a hundred frames. Once the changes start kicking in from the game, I had stuff to do on every single frame.

Two notes on the names here: 

a) I took a very long time to commit to using the name 'Chara' for the fallen child. Spoilers: I really don't like it. For a lot of reasons, some of which I think are good, others of which I think are just me being a contrarian jerkwad. That goes more into game meta than I really need to here though, just mind that at the time that I made this gif, I hadn't caved in and gone 'ugh I guess there does need to be _a_  name we all settle on using if for no other reason than so we all know which character we're talking about'. If I were doing this gif now, I would in fact use Chara here, even if I'd hate every second I did it.

b) This is where Frisk's name is erased. Everything was intact-- more or less-- up until this point.

> The skeleton stands with open, slightly trembling arms. The thing that wears a child's skin strides forward with absolute purpose, black-eyed and blank of face.

I play a lot with the expressionlessness of Frisk's sprite, you may have noticed.

I have mixed feelings about replaying game scenes note for note. I really only think it should be done if you're bringing something new and interesting to the table, and frankly I don't know that I'm doing this here. But there were feelings at play, so... I did it anyway.

> Only the crunch of snow and the faint rattling of bones can be heard, sharp through the air.
> 
> The thing stops short, just a few feet shy of the lanky skeleton. It does not look up, eyes landing just above the skeleton's knee. If it sees anything at all, it gives no indication. A right hand lifts, cased in a dust-crusted glove. It holds in the air, ready to draw back for a punch.
> 
> Teeth chatter somewhere above its head, but the bony arms stay extended, an incomprehensible offer.

Human is a lot less committed to the barely-a-step-away-from-first-person limited third POV I did most of the rest of the series in. As an intro piece I think it works, but it does make this one stand out more from the rest. It's not clear whose head we're in because we're not really in anyone's head here, but then the Frisk at this point is more force of nature than anything else. Right now, I think it's fine. You don't want to open something like this on a POV like Frisk's in the early parts of the story and while I'd love to see this scene from Papyrus' angle, that's not what this is, either.

> The thing's hand flexes, squirming in the air, until it writhes free of the glove, letting it fall into the snow. It stumbles forward like a marionette learning to walk, only saved from falling because the skeleton kneels and catches it.
> 
> The human throws their arms around Papyrus and buries their face against his armour. He hesitates, but not for long. "Wowie!!" he booms. "You did it!!! You didn't do a violence!!!"

Those extra exclamation points from the transcription are vaguely painful to me, but what can you do. Again, I don't like using unvarnished game text but it was kind of necessary here.

The hug of acceptance isn't really played off in game, and I get why technically it's like that. But man. _Man_.

And of course too, here's where we see identifiers proving their importance. It's extremely heavy-handed here, going from 'thing' and 'it' to 'human' and 'they', but I'm not always going for subtlety here.

> The human shakes against him, but otherwise seems not even to breathe. Papyrus pays it no mind, and says, "To be honest, I was a little afraid... but you're already becoming a great person! I'm so proud I could cry!!!"
> 
> Papyrus squeezes the human lightly, but they still cling to him, small fingers all tangled up on his cape. "Wait, wasn't I supposed to capture you...?" says Papyrus, looking down at the human. "Well, forget it! I just want you to be the best person you can be. So let's let bybones be bybones. I'll even tell you how to leave the underground!"
> 
> The human gives no indication that they hear a single word Papyrus says after that, even when he pulls them away to point them east, waving in the direction of the barrier. They seem to look in the direction he points, but nothing of their expression changes. After too long a silence from them, Papyrus says, "Anyway!! That's enough talking!! I'll be at home being a cool friend!!! Feel free to come by and hang out!!!"
> 
> He laughs then and releases the human, ambling back in the direction of the deserted town. The human remains, kneeling in the snow and pointed eastward. Unblinking, they rise and turn around, carefully stepping around Papyrus' tracks.

Frisk and Sans are the protagonists. But Papyrus is the hero of this story; I worry that I don't give him enough due throughout. We'll probably be looking at that thought more later. 

* * *

> Sans ambles into the house and stops to pat his pet rock on the head. He glances into the living room, at the television set to the test pattern. He takes a good long look at the houseguest seated on the floor in front of the couch, then steps into the kitchen, taking a shortcut upstairs from there. He knocks at his brother's door and steps inside. "Hey Papyrus," he says. "Is that the human downstairs?"

Shouldn't have had variants on the word 'ambles' twice so close together; it's uncommon enough to stick out.

So we're introduced to Sans' POV here, and again, it's not quite locked as tightly to him as it is later. This is something I probably would deal with a bit more but I think he gives us enough information here that I wouldn't need to do too much.

> Papyrus gets up from the computer. "Yeah!!" he says. "They came over to hang out after they decided to be a better person!! Isn't it great!!"
> 
> "Yeah..." says Sans, glancing to the door. "I'll go say hi, I guess."
> 
> He heads back downstairs, the normal way this time, to stand beside the human. If they notice him standing there, they don't acknowledge it in any way: they just keep staring at the test pattern, chin tilted a bit upwards to do it, eyes all swallowed by pupil. They don't blink and they don't breathe.
> 
> Sans shifts, moving to sit on his heels. "Hey buddy," he says. Nothing. That doesn't stop him, of course. "So you changed your mind, huh? That's good. That's real good. But we gotta talk about something. Or I gotta, I guess. You don't seem like much of a talker. That's okay." He waits a beat, two, three, but the human still doesn't acknowledge him. "It's like this, kid. You can stay here as long as you like, as long as you're good with eating spaghetti, I guess, but if you ever hurt anyone again, you're gonna have to go. You understand? Just nod or something if you do, okay?"

So canonically, Sans is very appreciative of a Frisk who spares Papyrus and breaks genocide... but, then, canonically you just go on with a neutral route from there. And that... eeh. Again there's technical reasons not least of which it'd be dumb to end the game there. But, well, if I felt that living with yourself after doing a thing like that was going to be easy, I wouldn't have a fic series, would I?

Either way, he's appreciative when Frisk doesn't, you know, move in with him. I think the wariness is perfectly reasonable here, heh.

> The moment stretches out between them until the human turns their head, for the first time making something like eye contact with Sans. There's no recognition or expression still, but they hold that, eye to socket, and then they blink. Once, slowly, like a cat.
> 
> Sans settles a hand on the human's shoulder and gives it a squeeze. "Well, that's a start. You're gonna be okay, kid. Hey, maybe I can find you a word search or something. You liked the one I left out there, right?"

Of course I checked the wordsearch in my play.

> The human takes better to that than anyone ever really expects. They watch the test pattern, and they do Sans' word searches, a crayon gripped awkwardly in one fist. They find most of the words, usually. They chew on burnt lengths of spaghetti or leftover fries from Grillby's that Sans brings over, once people start fearfully returning to town. They sleep in short bursts, curled up in a tight ball on the floor in front of the couch.

One thing I would need to do is clarify the timeline. It's very muddy. When things do happen, they happen over a very short period, which is fine, but it would help to know as a rule just how long of a gap there is betwen these periods.

Naturally, this was of no import when I intended to write a single standalone piece.

> Papyrus chatters at them, never much minding the human's lack of response. They never do approach him again the way they did when they cast their boxing glove aside.
> 
> Sans keeps supplying word searches, tries to tell jokes at the human but doesn't bother after the first few attempts elicit nothing. One day as he stands up from pressing the paper into the human's hands, he looks down at their tangled wreck of hair. "Whoa, kid, you planning on doing something about this?" He starts to work his fingers in to try and unpick some of the knots, but the human starts shaking their head wildly, long after Sans jerks his hand away.

So, Frisk being head and specifically hair-shy. There's two reasons for it, one of which I had in mind here when I wrote this, the other that I worked in later. That other reason is, of course, the head injury.

But there's something else going on here too and it goes back to the game proper.

So when you meet Toriel and she shows you (I have a bad habit of conflating PCs of games and 'you' in casual discourse, please dwi) to your room, she ruffles your hair. This would have been the last pleasant contact Frisk would have had with anyone, before they panicked at realizing there was no getting out of the ruins. 

> "Hey, hey, hey," says Sans, once the human stops, holding his hands directly in their line of sight. "Okay, it's fine like that, it's okay, it's okay, you're gonna be okay."
> 
> They turn their head up in his direction at that, and their lips, momentarily, press tight together. Their mouth opens, followed by a rusty sound, then they stop. They lower their head, looking down to the word search, and grip the crayon in their fist. Painstakingly, they start circling one letter at a time.
> 
> ⓈⓉⓄⓅ ⓁⓎⒾⓃⒼ

So I love unicode. I love being able to play with and warp text and do things that for a good long while you really couldn't do for a while when all you were stuck with was plaintext or basic formatting. The notion of communicating through the word search... it struck me so I did it and in its way it's probably the root of the graphs I inflicted upon all of you later.

> Sans sighs, and sits down next to the human. "Look, kid," he says. "You've done some horrible stuff.  I only know what you did around here. If there was more than that... well, you're right. That's never gonna be okay. And I hope you're never okay with what you did. But you're alive, kid. And a lotta people aren't. And you're gonna have to figure out what you're gonna do with that. Doesn't have to be today, or tomorrow, or even soon. But there's gonna be something you need to do. And you're gonna do it. And you're gonna start learning to be a better person, not just someone who doesn't hurt people." He pauses. "Don't get me wrong, that's a big step up. But I'm not lying. You're gonna be okay, kid. Just keep putting in the time."

Okay the thing about this is that... as far as advice goes, it's not terrible. But it's not exactly great, either. But it's very character-appropriate, given that it's largely advocating sitting around and waiting for something that changes things. 

This is of course the first time we begin the affirmation that whatever happens here, this is not a story where the goal is forgiveness. I had it in the tags I scattershotted on the original posting. I removed it.

> He stands up and shoves his hands in his pockets. "Here, lemme go to the library for you. Get you something to read."

Something that's often overlooked with portrayals of Sans is that he's really very manipulative. Even though one of the very first things we ever see him do in the game is deftly do exactly the right things to get Papyrus pay absolutely no attention to you. Flowey's _absolutely correct_  when he points out that Sans is manipulating Frisk.

Of course, he probably started them on lighter reading than the stuff about monster funerals.

* * *

> Days pass, stretching into weeks. The human stays put in Papyrus and Sans' living room, but sometimes they turn their head, tracking the skeletons' movement as they pass through the room. They both take it as a good sign.

Again, total lack of timeline clarity. The thing I'd honestly need to do here is also expand some to better sell both the skeletons warming up to Frisk here. Papyrus is easy, sure, but Sans is suspicious and sharp.

But I wasn't planning ahead yet, and I had access to an old fanfiction trick: relying on the reader's residual knowledge of the game material. It's easy to believe they warm up to this highly murderous Frisk because we all remember true pacifist, right? At this stage of things, this wasn't a story yet about this broken-souled Frisk connecting to the people around them, and it wasn't yet a story that asked the question of what it _would_  take, aside from full genocide, to engage Sans enough to get off his ass.

So, consider this paragraph crossed out with a big red EXPAND next to it.

> Then, they start to pick themself up off the floor as Sans heads from the kitchen to the front. They fall in behind him, making him stop curiously just outside the front. "Hey, kid. You coming with? I'm not going anywhere special. Just the lookout post."
> 
> The human hesitates, then makes a single, definitive nod, looking up at Sans for a split second, then snapping their gaze down to their feet.
> 
> "Okay, kid," he says. "Come on. Follow me, we'll take a shortcut."
> 
> The human goes with Sans, and allows themself to be picked up and sat on the counter of the lookout post. The whole time, they look straight up the path, the direction they came from. They sit and there stare all day long, while Sans lounges and flips through a car magazine.
> 
> They don't go with him every day. But now and again, something catches in the human's hollow heart, and they follow him there. Sometimes they bring one of the books Sans borrowed from the library for them, and they read, peering up the path every page.

Here's definitely where they've got the stuff about monster funerals, yeah. Sans has certainly planned for this to happen eventually-- or at least to see if it would.

> The human waits for Sans one morning, clutching the broom and the dustpan from the kitchen. Sans says nothing, not as they follow him to work, not as they set out up the path, not as he silently follows them back into the ruins.
> 
> They stop just past the open inner door, and they start to sweep, clumsily, with the broom far too large for them. They sweep the dust they made on their way out of the ruins, collecting every last bit into the pan. They leave the broom behind and cradle the dustpan in their arms, tilting it back to keep it from spilling, as they walk through the ruins.
> 
> They carry the dustpan through a little house, empty and filled with more ordinary dust, and they walk past a dead tree. They step lightly over cracked floors, and avoid piles of leaves, and step past rows of spikes.
> 
> The human makes their way to a patch of wilted yellow flowers, preserved by the memory of sunlight and wind. They look down at the dustpan in their arms, its catcher filled with faint, shimmering dust, and they slowly pour it over the flowers. They stand over the flowerbed, looking directly at it, then sink to their knees.
> 
> They dab their tongue at their cracked lips. They work them silently, like practice, until they manage to say, in a voice rusty from disuse, "Pie."

So 'rusty from disuse' is directly referencing a line from Diane Duane's A Wizard Alone, which I suppose I could call an inspiration in general for this series. If you don't mind YA, I recommend that series in general. New one out soon! I pull another concept from another book earlier in the series-- I'll mention it later; I use it in a pretty different way.

The pie, is of course, important.

> The child lowers their head, and there they remain, until Sans walks out of the shadows and guides them to their feet. "Come on, kid," he says. "Let's go home."

And going home, of course, also closes out the first major section of the series, with Terminate and Stay Resident. Also see here the jump from 'human' to 'child', which, again, very heavy-handed but I wasn't going for subtlety here.


	2. Appendix B: Giving LOVE a Bad Name

The plot begins with two questions: what sort of person initiates the genocide route, and what sort of person chooses to stop it? Because we're doing this through the medium of prose, we're removing the meta-character that is the player and thus are looking at this entirely from the angle of the decisions characters make.

The rules of engagement are thus:

  1. We are aiming for variant true pacifist by way of this broken genocide
  2. Above all else, respect the spirit of the source material
  3. No apologia for any act that led to the starting circumstances
  4. Mistakes are allowed. Characters being stupid is not.
  5. Toriel is unsaveable
  6. No resets and no reloads; these are what Chara is aiming to cause
  7. Sans never loses his chill
  8. We're running with the demon interpretation of Chara
  9. No pertinent communication between people on the 'same side'.
  10. Chara can exacerbate Frisk's extant mental health problems, but for the love of god absolutely no 'the demonic force is the cause of these problems' and I will smash my own keyboard myself before I go with 'removing that influence fixes said problems'
  11. Sans never loses his goddamn chill
  12. No Gaster
  13. No _fucking_ apologia
  14. No Asriel
  15. _Sans never, ever, ever loses his fucking chill_



Point 1, I think we see was a solid hit overall; I don't think I need to say more than that there.

Point 2 speaks a lot to my feelings about certain AUs, but the gist is: no angst for the sake of angst, no edge for the sake of edge. This is a story with a lot of pain in it but every bit of it needs to serve narrative purpose rather than just to give readers that sweet sweet feel-bad sensation.

Point 3: To get to genocide Papyrus, one needs a minimum of 36 kills plus Toriel. That's assuming each kill by the game counter represents each individual killed and not an abstraction. In short: that's minimum thirty-seven people dead. At no point are we going to be saying 'that's okay'.

Point 4: A plot that hinges on characters making stupid decisions is generally bad.

Point 5: There is no evading the consequences.

Point 6: Part of this is for narrative ease, because introducing that tangle always makes things more of a pain to deal with. Another is that it's here to actually place a very nearby, looming threat. And another... this does something (that I think is) very interesting with Chara's motives here.

So Chara dies with the plan to destroy humanity in mind, takes over Asriel, blah blah blah canon events, soul fragments. Then they latch on to Frisk's soul at the time of the fall and awaken after the ruins genocide is complete, and the technicals of that can come later. But being as how genocide and the distancing effect of LOVE haven't kicked in yet, we're not ever at that point. They're still capable of feeling connection to other people. This has two effects: in order to try and gain full control over the body, they need to, effectively, artificially raise their LOVE in order to try and erase this person... and two, when Asriel, even in the form of Flowey appears, they're still able to feel _something_. And it's a thing that's been warped by time and both their deaths and, yes, that LOVE. But they're playing for Asriel here, because they still have that capacity.

As a point of interest, Chara is explicitly and adamantly written in this story as something other than sociopathic. Literally the opposite, really...

Point 7: I'm not big into crying or angry Sans. Sans never loses his chill.

Point 8: I'd say we still run a lot closer to that than any of the 'soft chara' interpretations (which I will not go off on here, though we'll see if I do later), but you'll note that I did not adhere to this one. They're certainly something other than human at this point in the timeline, but I found a different sort of thread to hang that off of. Basically I can't have them be fully human because I need them to make the play for the souls at the end, but they're certainly not some poor misunderstood little cinnamon roll. _They are a malicious agent in this_. Even in the end, when they're speaking solely as themself-- they're absolutely a dick. But going full demon on this becomes very very boring the second I need them to be an active participant. So-- not a demon in the end, but enigmatic and cruel. And still a kid, too.

I'll be talking more about specific decisions in terms of how and why I wrote them the way I did later, but realize pretty much all of my plot layout predates the rise of narrator Chara as a theory*, that narrator Chara is pivotal to most popular speculations about them as a person, and that [I do not and have never subscribed to the narrator Chara theory](http://villainfetish.tumblr.com/post/136026675453/kuryree-villainfetish-kuryree). Any extrapolations I've made about them as a person are based entirely on the True Lab convos and Asriel's post-true-pacifist conversation.

*it actually predates the commonly-accepted usage of Chara as a name, even. That had long since taken root by the time I caved on the subject, though.

Point 9: Mostly I did this for kicks, to try and challenge myself.

Point 10: I shouldn't need to explain on this. I really should not.

Point 11: seriously you get one, maybe two lines where he maybe loses the slightest bit of composure where do people get this weepy stuff from

Point 12: So Gaster is not a character that really interests me, tbh. Mostly because I need a little more source material to sink my teeth into in order to really find something I want to work with. But I broke this one, you'll note, because this did become a story where someone acting from outside of time and space had a reasonable role here.

Point 13: apologia for the actions of fictional characters is a blight upon humanity

Point 14: So I'm actually very satisfied with the ending Asriel gets in the game. I've never felt that need to save him-- his ending is sad, but I think it hits the right notes. I've read fic _about_ saving him and enjoyed it quite a lot but I never wanted to write that myself.

... oops.

Point 15: i can maybe see the angry stuff, maybe, but man anger takes work and anger takes effort did people play the same game as me i can't even???????

* * *

>   _i say to you againe, doe not call up any that you can not put downe_

What we have here is a sign of the original full demon bit, of course. Might want to use something else now, or not. I wasn't 100% yet on the full nature of Chara's involvement yet, and it shows here and in a few other places. 

* * *

 

> Somebody finally comes. It's inevitable. The only question is what tipped people off. Maybe it was Sans ordering extra fries to go from Grillby's, or the way he took to borrowing more from the library. Maybe someone took a closer look at the bundled-up figure that would waddle behind Sans sometimes, carrying a little brush and a dustpan and bags.

So here's our first riff on 'but nobody came', of course. It's also the first hint of our subplot with dealing with the remains in the forest. It stays pretty backgrounded throughout but it's pretty important to the bit about Frisk's actions and the harm they've caused. I probably should have done a bit more with it; a scene where they're actually out cleaning up would probably have helped. As it is, we don't start addressing Frisk's culpability until way too late.

Of note too is that the POV starts further out than it does later in later entries. Here it's sort of what in a visual medium would be what you call an 'establishing shot', something to set the scene. It no longer becomes as necessary when we become familiar with our agents in the story. 

> More likely it was Papyrus, who went around everywhere announcing that he had successfully rehabilitated a human from a puzzle-hating weirdo into a weirdo who liked the junior jumble.

I do do jokes. From time to time. If there's one way my Sans is off, it's that I have trouble with off-the-cuff puns. Mostly I write around this by putting him in scenarios were that's less important. 

> 'Like' is a strong word for the hollow child. Sometimes they stand beside him as he struggles with it. More rarely a sliver of brown emerges around their too-wide pupils and they lower their head to the page with a short sharp motion. They point to a letter. Sometimes it helps. Usually it just confuses him.

You can tell we're not in POV yet because it's using 'child' for Frisk. Where Human used that as a sign of progression, it did so out of POV itself. It's too formal for Sans. 

> But Papyrus is an optimist, and more than that, he remembers when the dead-eyed child jerked back from a precipice and into his arms. Even a hint of reaction is a success and cause for celebration, and he can't help but share.
> 
> Unfortunately, the people he's sharing with are friends and family of the child's victims. It doesn't take the all that long to put two and two together.
> 
> To call it an angry mob would be an overstatement. There aren't enough of them alive for that. But they're mobbed up around the front door to the house, and they're angry, demanding Papyrus let them in, let them get their pound of flesh.

Should probably have done more with this, too. The bit with icecap's mom later on does a lot of the heavy lifting but some more mentions elsewhere probably would have helped. 

> Inside, it's easy to hear his defenses of the child: they're not hurting anyone anymore, they're not _going_ to hurt anyone anymore, they really like puzzles, he, the great Papyrus will make sure nothing bad happens.

I feel bad, you know, about how much I background Papyrus in this story. He's the one who really gives Frisk the hand they need to both start and finish things, and of course he's instrumental in keeping Sans going. Even here-- if he wasn't audible, would Frisk have had it in them to try and push past Chara's opposition in this next bit? I dunno.

The dirty secret of why Papyrus gets relatively little screentime is that I can't write Papyrus for shit. Oh, sure, he comes out well in the stuff I release, but it's like pulling teeth. I need to have the game script open and I need to be pattern-matching against his canonical lines for cadence and phrasing, and I need way more eyes on his bits than I do any other. He's the one part of this story where I've had to do full-on rewrites. 

> The survivors are less distinct, less powerful of voice: mostly the tone of their voices carries in past the door. Sorrow, fear, anger, desparation, and loss, always loss, cut through the door like knives.

Very very telly. This needs to be either cut or expanded. Probably expanded. 

> Sans bypasses the mob to get in, but he stands just inside the door, hands shoved in his pockets. He looks around the empty living room. Nobody home to the casual glance. But the TV is on, tuned to a test pattern. And he knows there's someone here.

Here's where we start bringing the POV in. And we start with casual shortcutting, because, you know. 

> He strolls to the center of the room to get a better look around, and finds them huddled in the niche between the couch and the end table. They're curled up tight in a ball, head between their knees, fingers knotted in their tangled mass of hair.

The delightful penstab on Tumblr[ illustrated this scene and a later one too](http://villainfetish.tumblr.com/post/134948422553/penstab-some-scenes-from-holding-pattern-by).  

> Sans sits down in front of them, maybe a foot and a half away. "Hey, kid," he says. He keeps it quiet, maybe even soothing. "Try not to listen. It's not gonna help, not right now." There's tricks to talking to the kid, he's found, an exact right distance to keep. Never too warm with them. They're scarred by more than what they did after falling. Still, the kid's usually just blank. But sometimes...

At this point I had not worked out at all anything of Frisk's history before falling beyond that it was Not Good. At this point, though, pretty much all their concentration is given over to trying to push back Chara, who is still very actively trying to gain enough control of the body to reset/reload to a point back when they had more influence. (effectively, the pre-Papyrus genocide Snowdin save)

Right now, Frisk is _petrified_ of distractions. Distractions like anything to do with the people around them. We'll discuss this a bit more later on in this story and a bit more in Hysteresis. I could have done this a little bit more clearly but anything to do with what specifically is driving Frisk at this stage of things has to be muddled.

At any rate, to someone as astute as Sans, it's clear that there's something seriously, seriously wrong with this kid and not just overpowering guilt. 

> The kid lifts their head. Or, they dig their hands into their hair and pull their head up, a sharp upward jerk. Nothing they do is smooth. But today their empty expression is frayed at the edges, showing faint quivers at the corners of their lips. They point their head in a few different directions until Sans makes a low hum, holding it for a few seconds. Long enough for the kid to orient themself, look up at him.

Frisk does not see well at the best of times, as comes up later on in the plot. They're also actively fighting for control of pretty much anything to do with their body. Moving in multiple directions at once (so to speak), vision being forcibly blurred even more than it naturally is-- Chara's working their butt off a lot of the time here. Frisk is effectively able to override what Chara tries to do, and will eventually win out in bodily struggles, but if they give up... well, it's like arm wrestling, I guess. Doesn't matter if you've got the stronger arm if that arm's getting tired. 

> Sans extends his hands, holds them out for the kid, where they should be able to notice them. "You'll be done cleaning up soon," he says. "I'll make sure everything gets to the right people. See how you feel then. You should start seeing them, when you're up to it."
> 
> Another of Papyrus' vigorous defenses filters through the door, followed by a low, discontented rumble.
> 
> The kid's throat works, fighting the air. A strangled, choking hiss comes out of their mouth as they struggle to land their tongue against the back of their teeth.

So, Frisk and how verbal they are or not. This... whole thing I probably could have done better with, but I'm not entirely sure. Again, Chara's exacerbating things: if your tongue doesn't move the way you want it to, you're not gonna be able to talk well. And they're not even able to think very clearly because of Chara effectively pushing Frisk around their own mind. And of course there's the business with the bindings against names and pronouns too (Chara evidently subscribes to Sapir-Whorf in this story; I don't, so much) which limits the way Frisk is able to communicate even when they're not physically imposed against talking. I dunno. I think I sell them learning to talk fairly well. I'd be uncomfortable with strictly billing this as a nonverbal Frisk, though they're definitely a reluctant talker even when they're unbound and not fighting for control. Certainly if someone's doing a lot of the talking in the merger, it's more likely to be Asriel or Chara.

FWIW I am explicitly not attempting to write autism here, not that that prevents reading the result as such, and there's definitely a few things I've done that are symptoms. I wouldn't argue a reading that placed Frisk somewhere on the spectrum though the merger in the end convolutes things, of course. 

> Sans taps his fingerbones against his palms, still holding his hands out in offer. "Come on, kid," he says. "You can do it. Try words."

POV might not be as tight here as later or Sans could just be thinking more casually here. Either way, later on he uses metacarpals rather than palms. I think the inconsistency on that particular phrasing is probably fine; it's one of those words that sticks out enough that you don't want to reuse it. 

> Their hands wrench free of their hair and land in Sans', somehow colder than the smooth white bones. Once they land, he can see the tremors in them more clearly, sees the hands shake harder from the touch. Sans takes a chance and squeezes, holding the kid's hands tight enough to still them. "I gotcha," he says. 
> 
> It seems to help. "Ss--sss--s," the kid manages, then chokes on their tongue as they tries to work it back. They start over, managing to wrest control of their tongue long enough to blurt, voice still rough and ragged, "S--scared."

Couple things going on here. One, of course-- physical touch matters a lot to this story. That contact, that connection to the outside, the notion that help can come from somewhere other than within, all of that. Right now, Frisk surely believes all they can do is sit and blockade this thing that's strangling them slowly.

The other is possibly the most hidden instance of me self-indulgently inserting my own knowledge into this. Among other things, and this is ancient, ancient history, I took some linguistics back in the day, including phonetics. Apparently all for the purpose of knowing exactly where Frisk's tongue is in their mouth as they try and say the word 'scared'.

And of course, they're not afraid of the crowd. They're afraid of what they want to do to said crowd. This is _not_ supposed to be immediately obvious. It's supposed to be a very oblique jump in reasoning, as it happens. 

> Sans glances from the kid to the door, head tilting toward the noise from the other side. He looks back, down at the kid's icy hands, stilled only by his grip. Catches the faint glimmer of wetness at the corner of their pupil-swallowed eyes. He doesn't misread the nature of their fear. "You're doing good, kid," he says. "You're doing real good. You're not gonna hurt anyone. Not here. I'm proud of you."

... because Sans thinks obliquely, and while he's a truthful narrator, he doesn't necessarily give away all his reasoning to the reader. And here, now that he's had some time-- which, again, I should have established more thoroughly earlier on-- he can appreciate that while he doesn't know what's going on here, this is not at all easy for Frisk. 

> Something in the kid breaks, and the dampness turns into full-on tears. They fall forward against him, gripping his hands tightly, sobbing out long, agonized hiccups into his jacket, only breaking up the tears to cough violently.
> 
> "Oh, _kid_ ," says Sans. He keeps his grip on the kid's hands, where they're needed, resists the urge to go for a hug. Kid needs that too, but they're not ready. He lets them tire themself out from crying, only loosens his grip when the kid makes to pull their hands free and sit back, chin on knees, arms wrapped tight around their legs.

So, the decision not to hug here... Frisk is squeezing back at his hands, and they're shaking badly, uncontrollably, and they did, albeit with prompting, grab on first. He's not going to break that one contact for a different one. 

> "I'm going to Grillby's," says Sans. "I'll getcha some fries while I'm out. Extra ketchup, right? Maybe I'll swing by the store, too. Grab you something with lemon. Don't like the sound of that cough. Get yourself a glass of water while you wait for me, okay? Maybe get the jumble out for Papyrus, he'll be coming in soon."

Lot of things going on here, none of which is supposed to be obvious, because again, Sans isn't showing all his hand in this POV. One is that he's not necessarily comfortable with that sort of emotional display, yet-- he's not going to push Frisk away while they're still crying, but neither is he going to want to hang around. So he's going to Grillby's. He says he's going to Grillby's. He's not lying, because he is going to go to Grillby's... in a bit.

Second is that he is-- possibly hypocritically, given that this _is_ Sans we're talking about here-- pushing Frisk to do more stuff. This is sort of what I'm wanting to show at the surface.

Third and last? He's actually going out to disperse the crowd. Which is why he says Papyrus will be in soon. 

> Sans stands up and tugs his jacket back into place. He doesn't bother blotting the wet spot, just walks over to the door. Not long after he steps outside, things go quiet, and the child gets to their wobbly feet

* * *

>  "Well, this is a surprise."

So........ okay this conversation's confusing to people for a couple reasons, none of which I think compel me to potentially change it, because it's short.

This is only one half of a conversation. A phone conversation, overheard through Sans' bedroom door. A door that you'd really only be able to eavesdrop through if you were in some way a meta-temporal or meta-spatial being. Like if you could save and reload.

This is our first pure Chara POV section, of two. They are staying very, very, very quiet, because Frisk is hyperalert. It's loosely implied by Flowey's section later on that they manage to take enough control at points to have short chats with Flowey-- again, I probably could and should have done more with this.

So the other reason this conversation is confusing is the question of who's being talked to. To this, I say, flip back to the original posting for Nobody Home. Regard the character listing.

He's talking to Alphys. I said from the get-go that he's talking to Alphys. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 

> "Dunno what I can tell you. Most of my equipment's busted. Never saw a good reason to fix it."

just an extrapolation that if The Machine is broken there's probably other stuff that is, too. 

> "Okay, I can talk over some theory. Yeah. Lay it on me."
> 
> "Yeah. Yeah. It's a holding pattern. Intentional, I think. 'S good idea. Good as anything I ever came up with, anyway. That's, uh, maybe not a great endorsement."

Here's our only title drop. Basically Frisk is treading water, trying to stop Chara from doing anything at all. Suspended in the air, unable to land. Keeping it on Frisk's turn and never Chara's, even if it means staying like that forever.

So yeah, when I started, the premise of this story I had in mind was: 'what if Frisk had to steal Sans' move in order to stop the fallen child from doing their thing'. 

> "I do have front-row seats. Think this time it's more complicated than the earlier readings."

I possibly could have made clearer that a lot of the 'earlier' stuff is from when Flowey was running resets. We are, effectively, starting from a 'clean save'. 

> "Yeah, it's hard to get details. They're, uh, resistant."
> 
> "Well, I'll keep a socket out. Dunno what else I can do."
> 
> "Nah. Somebody's home. I'll get through. Eventually."
> 
> "Better not. They get overwhelmed easily. But Pap's doing a lot of good. I think. Well, it's hard to stay down around him, you know."

Sans is of course an expert on that front. 

> "You too. Keep in touch."

* * *

> Monster food doesn't come out the other side. That much is true. But monster water and human water: same thing. Still have to deal with that. Waits until it's late, listens to story from bottom of the stairs. Puts arms around knees and lifts head and forgets eyes and focuses everything into listening.

Hoo boy the early Frisk POV sections. By absolutely any technical metric, they're a mistake. Removing names is bad enough. Removing any of Frisk's personal pronouns is worse. These bits were extremely difficult to construct. But ultimately I think it was the correct choice for the story-- it brings into absolute clarity just how dire Frisk's state is, and the sheer effort they need to go to in order to have any sort of clarity of thought. The trick here-- and this comes up a little bit more later-- is that these POVs are actually both Frisk and Chara's, not just one or the other's. In most of them, Frisk is controlling the narration but it's very much a jumble of both their perceptions.

Also, like, do you have any idea how hard it was to come up with a reason for why Frisk would go outside? I knew I wanted to do this confrontation with Flowey, but man. Then this occurred. 

> Door opens, door shuts. Shuffling upstairs. Another door, one-two. Snoring from past the near door. That means it's time.

There is probably a very, very small window of time when both Papyrus is catching a nap and Sans isn't grabbing a midnight snack. Frisk is, as a rule, written pretty sharp but there's a lot of fog and deliberate impediments and internal impediments. 

> Stands up. Aims for hall closet. Steps not hard. Doesn't have to fight much. Never does for this. Human weakness. Worthless. Waste of time. A joke: trash makes the trash. Hilarious.

Do you have any idea how hard it was to come up with a tasteful way of framing this? Still not satisfied with this phrasing.

Either way a lot of this is a weird mix of Frisk and Chara talking here-- the naked disdain for humanity (the intentional distancing themself from humanity!) and the 'joke' is definitely Chara.

So obviously this is a definite artifact of my starting from the demon reading. On the other hand, I don't think there's a need to do more than tweak this stuff. What we're getting from this is Frisk is actually left with some freedom of motion when they go to take care of this stuff.

Flowey's POV bit later tells us that this isn't strictly true-- Chara manages to, on occasion, slip forward and chat some. That stops entirely after this scene, of course.

If we're coming from the demon angle then the disdain for all this can be taken at face value. From what we know of Chara now, looking back... this still works as them intentionally distancing themself both from Frisk and from humanity as a whole. It also kind of works from the angle of, geez, stuck in someone else's body and they've gotta pee, you don't wanna deal with that. It also kind of works, I think, if everyone's plumbing doesn't match up. This isn't something the story touches on because it isn't something the story needs to touch on, but I kind of like that mismatch. When everyone's cooperating in the end, everyone can deal more easily, but right now... 

> Only has to fight laughter.
> 
> Steps into closest pair of shoes: laces loose, tongue forward, easy to wear. Reaches a jacket, pulls it down. Wants to empty pockets. Stops. Doesn't want to. Doesn't. Wants to but doesn't do it. Not too hard to stop. Easier to hold on in here. Something warm, somewhere. Too easy? Trap? No, still a fight. Just... stronger here? Careful. Doesn't drop guard. Not safe. Never safe.

So. Here's actually our very first suggestion that Frisk is dealing with their own urges to do not very good things here; that's pure Frisk, them wanting to clean out Sans' pockets.

Here too is where we get an indication that Frisk is as afraid of complacency as they are of Chara; right now, to them, the notion of relaxing means they're giving Chara an opening, a chance to get kicked out of their own mind. This notion probably mostly comes from Chara themself, who is attempting to erode Frisk's sense of self, who is trying to cut connections before they form, who is trying to exhaust Frisk enough that they can push through a crack. If Frisk doesn't have enough sense of a self to fight, to think of themself as a person, they'll be much easier for Chara to override-- both in the sense of it literally being easier to move into an empty house than one that still has stuff everywhere, and also in the sense of the Chara of this story needing to depersonalize people in order to victimize them. This is strictly new ground from the game material since that's silent on the matter, but yeah that's kind of how I like reading this. YMMV, of course. 

> Shuffles out door.
> 
> Finds a spot out back. Quiet. Tries not to laugh. Feels cheeks burn. Not sure why. Somewhere, a memory. But holds steady. Finishes. Checks all around. No mess.

Again, really hard to do this tastefully. Should probably be refined now that I have a clearer picture on their personal history, since I was going kind of scattershot. 

> Moves left foot, right foot, left foot. Careful not to trip on laces. So careful.
> 
> Doesn't feel vines around ankles until too late. Just holding.
> 
> "Well, howdy, ol' pal! Long time no see!"
> 
> Freezes. Heart pounds and screams and pounds. Wants to scream. Won't scream. Scared scared scared scared. Tongue free. Why? Don't think. Don't stop. Don't let up. Mouth opens. Tongue moves, too easily, words come out wrong. Not enough practice. But too easy. Slide out like butter. "G-go aw-ay."

As a rule throughout the series, Chara backs off before they're going to make a move. Here's our first instance. 

> Laughing, laughing, everywhere. Vines curl higher, grip tighter. Doesn't struggle. Waste of focus. Waste of energy. "I wasn't talking to _you_ ! Why would anyone ever want to talk to you! Like there's anything at all in your dumb empty head! But you've got my _best_ friend with you right now, doncha? C'mon, let him come out and play!"

Christ this dialogue gave me headaches later on, dealing with it.The trick is how much Flowey actually knows about Frisk personally, which is not a hell of a lot. I sort of managed to retcon this all as half observation, half shots in the dark. I'd want to rework his dialogue though to avoid having to retcon at all. 

> Attack comes from within. Through throat, through tongue, trying to take control. Doesn't let it, won't let it, stops it, stops it, clamps mouth shut. Holds it. No letting go. Stays vigilant.
> 
> "Well, that's just not very friendly, is it! But I guess it's not surprising, is it? You're not good at _anything_! It's okay. I've got looooots of time. You're making sure of that, aincha? Geez, if you'd just DIE already, we could get back to having fun!"

So one of the things I need to do with these bits is give them something external to hang off of. Usually it's dialogue. But reading through Frisk's sentence fragments is very taxing, so I need to keep correct structure coming in from elsewhere. 

> Words can't hurt. Everything true. Knows it. Isn't good at anything. Weak. Too weak to fight for real. Just this. Useless. Can't win.

Again, this is about a 50/50 split between the two of them. There's very much a feedback loop going on here; Frisk's crippling issues are exacerbated by Chara which are then forefronted more by Frisk which then... etc. It is in fact a state of hysteresis. 

> Tries to see. Looks for escape. Run? Run. Can't run. Feet trapped, shoes too big to run in. Gloating inside. Patient. Finds a rock. Maybe close enough to reach? Bends and reaches for it. Close. Just a little further-- something not right. Too easy? Grabs it. Doesn't fall. Stands up.
> 
> Rock feels right. Heavy. Sharp. Could get free. Could get away. Just get away. Not inside. Away.

Reworking now, I'd make their first urge to be more aggressive. Still not going back in after, but definitely more aggressive. 

> "What's that you got there, buddy?" Grows closer, taller. Wants to run. Needs to run. Needs to focus. Needs to stand still. "Ooh, a rock? Looks dangerous! Hey, I wonder what your _new_ pals would think if they saw you with a big, sharp, dangerous rock? You even know their names, you idiot? Gosh, you're a terrible friend. Well, I can use easy words that even someone like you can understand. The tall one would be soooooo sad! You'd break his heart! Do skeletons have hearts? Don't you just wanna crack open his chest and dig in and see for yourself? I'll let you go if you promise to go look!"
> 
> Wants to needs to has to can't doesn't won't. Does hurt. Should know names. Can't. Not good enough for names. Doesn't deserve names. Can't spare room for names. Needs to focus needs to hold on. No distractions. Can't move, choking on the inside, can't get air.

If the reaction was more aggressive, Frisk not even considering denying Flowey calling them on their initial violence would have worked better, so yeah. Affirmation on that earlier note. 

> Looms, moves closer somehow. "Oh, but I bet you can't even get that far. You'd probably trip over that fat comedian. Hah, how's a skeleton put on that kind of weight? But he's kinda scary, isn't he? He'd probably throw you out if he thought you were going back to your old ways. He'll probably even think you stole his shoes, that you were running away to break some heads. You think _monsters_ even know about peeing?"

Asriel, of course, does. 

> Petals on knees now, feels like fire. Could bash at it could want to no can't _won't_ not now not ever. Yell for help? No nobody came nobody comes nobody ever comes nobody cares.

And again, nobody comes. 

> "And that's not saying what'll happen if anyone _else_ finds you. They'd rip you to shreds! Then you'd _have_ to let go and then my _best_ friend there with you could just reset everything and we could finish the job! You wouldn't even mind anymore if you did that! I mean, you wouldn't _have_ a mind anymore. Could you even tell? Could anyone? But you'd get to feel good! Finally! You remember what that feels like?"
> 
> No.
> 
> "Yeah, me neither. Wouldn't it be great to find out? The way I figure it, neither of us have to do anything. Not so long as you're standing here in someone else's shoes and jacket, holding a big mean rock. I mean, I guess the only way it could go worse for you would be if you were to attract some attention _right now_ , just a big ol' scream!"
> 
> Rock thrown like it's on fire, scream chokes away easily, too easily--

Even separated by death and time and both being completely different people now and not even being able to talk pertinently to each other, Asriel and Chara work well together. 

> I seize control in the panic. My _best friend's_ vines recede so I can dive for the rock. Not a good weapon. But one that'll do for now. The undone shoelaces tangle and I trip--

First person here was a mistake. Shoulda kept it into third; this is an easy rework and swapping in full 'they' would have still had the same effect with no other reframing. 

> Takes it back, grabs the wrist, pulls it away. Snow everywhere, cold burning cold. Holds on so tight it hurts. Legs kick hard to keep vines away. Shoe flips off, sock starts sliding away. Laughing coming from somewhere-- outside? Inside? Can't tell, hurts to breathe, breathing snow, drowning in snow. Lifts head, gasps.
> 
> Hands flat to ground, tries to push. Head slams to ground can't tell why. Inside, outside? Doesn't matter. Again, feels blood now. And again, cracking noise hard in ears, hardly feels like pain anymore, only seeing stars and blood. Pushes up hard gets to knees. Hurts so bad wants to scream can't scream don't let it scream.

So: is Frisk hitting their own head against the ground to try and shake Chara off, or is Chara doing it to try and force Frisk back? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 

> what if ʜ̶̷̲̅ᴇ̶̷̲̅ʟ̶̷̲̅ᴘ̶̷̲̅ came?

Mm, our first text distortion. 

> Nobody coming to help nobody wants to help nobody ever helped. Vines choking at throat, squeezing, eyes filled with stars. Lifts hands hard to close them freezing cold pulls the vines away.
> 
> Gets to feet. Hard to breathe. Blood freezing to cheek. Vines pull back.
> 
> "Well gosh, if you didn't wanna play, why didn't you just _say_ so, you idiot?" Pulls away entirely. No more petals. One bare foot burning in the snow. Can't feel toes. "But I understand what's going on. You're just waiting, huh? Waiting for them to trust you completely, and then-- _wham_ ! Wow, you're one sick puppy. I get why my pal likes you so much. You should let him help you! But, you know, if you're not gonna... well, he'll take care of it. Sooner or later. You'll slip up. This isn't even _boring_! This is all brand new to me!"

So I edited this art in late but I'm very happy with the stuff I had commissioned. Art by [Ashley Lange](http://ashlelang.tumblr.com/). 

> Sways wearily. Not even wrong. Wants to. Still wants to. Still not going to. Won't do it. Wants to let go. Wants to hurt. Wants it all to stop.

And their desire to hurt people never really goes away. 

> "He's manipulating you, y'know. You know what that means? He's making you do what _he_ wants. You think that little clean-up out in the forest you've been doing was _your_ idea? You've never had an idea in your life! What kind of friend is he, using you like that?"

what no i didn't just go edit the first commentary to say flowey makes this observation rather than chara i am a good writer who remembers their own writing 

> Just stands. Makes sense. Just trying to hurt. Lying after all. All lies. Not okay. Never okay.
> 
> he said he's proud
> 
> "Well, toodles! See you soon, pal!"
> 
> Everything going black.
> 
> Stay determined. More determined than _them_. 

* * *

> Sans rubs his thumb against the corner of his eye socket. "Yeah, make sure you bring back the leftovers when you're done today's lesson. Pretty sure the human'll wake up soon." He's got a backup hot dog wrapped up in foil just in case the spaghetti isn't even a little bit edible. But the kid's been a real encouragement, in their way. Papyrus' attempts have gotten maybe five percent edible since they came.

Poor Papyrus, you'll learn to cook one day.  

> "Worry not! When I return home, I can apply my superior nursing skills! I've been studying a book about human nurses! I am already a pro at nursing to humans! Did you know--" 
> 
> "You, uh, that's not one of Dr. Alphys' books, is it...?" Sans moves the phone to hold it against his shoulder while he puts the kettle on. The kid had better wake up soon, for their own good. 

Here's an expositional trick; this is actually kind of indicating that Sans does, in fact, have personal familiarity with Alphys. Which does need to be affirmed in this framing, residual memory of true pacifist and that conversation at the end of it aside. 

And you thought it was just a setup for a joke.  

> "Yeah! Undyne got it from her for me! Don't worry! I didn't tell her why I needed it! Boy, won't she be surprised when she finds out! Hey! Maybe I can walk you through it over the phone! The first important thing is the uniform! Are you wearing the correct uniform, Sans?" 
> 
> Sans finds a mug looks like it's been washed sometime in the last month, and gives it a rinse. "Yup," he says, and dries the mug with his t-shirt. 
> 
> "Are you sure? I haven't even described it for you yet!" 
> 
> He finds the tea and pulls out a bag. Smells lemon enough to attract a whole school of piranhas. Should be good for the kid's throat, if they even wake up today. Probably just end up getting poured out like last time. He drops the teabag in the mug. "Yup." 

Is it Sans who forgot that piranhas hate lemons, or is it me? The world may never know.  

> "Well okay! The next most important thing is-- Oh, hi, Undyne! Say hi to my brother!" 
> 
> "Hey Sans! Where're you not working today?" 
> 
> The kettle goes off. Sans pours the water right into the mug. "Vacation day, actually." 
> 
> "Whaaat, don't you have to actually show up to work to get vacation days?" 
> 
> "'S a good benefits package." Sans pulls the stepladder away from the sink and uses it to find the crystallized remains of a jar of honey in the back of the cupboard. He pops the lid and tosses it into the microwave. 

Short people will understand needing to have a stepladder in the kitchen. 

> "But don't you have to show up to work to get benefits? Oh, never mind, I guess. I should get the lesson started. Talk to you later!" 
> 
> He retrieves the jar and gives the liquid honey a good stir before glopping it into the tea. Probably too much. Oh well. "Yeah, you too. Tell Papyrus to text me on his way home, okay?" 
> 
> "Will do!" 

So while they're certainly able to be friend _ly_ with one another, I don't really buy anything that places Sans and Undyne as _friends_. There's very little about Sans that appeals to Undyne; he's demotivated, lazy, and underneath the surface kind of nerdy. Undyne likes enthusiasm, above all else. Anyway, POV on Sans is coming in tighter now than in the previous segment.  

> Sans drops the phone into his pocket. He grabs the tea and the hot dog and shuffles out to the living room. The kid's bundled up in the warmest blankets they own, laid out on the couch, but there's still enough room to sit in one corner. Sans puts the stuff down on the floor and gropes in the cushions for the remote. He turns the TV on and starts flicking through the channels. 
> 
> Something shifts next to him, underneath the blankets. Sans mutes the volume and turns, watches the kid wiggle their toes, then clutch the blanket hard right after. They try and lift their head, but let it drop down to the pillow propped against the arm of the couch. Sans shifts up the couch to sit on the edge near the kid's end, right as they start gingerly probing at the bandage wrapped tight around their head. "Heya," he says. "How're you feeling, kiddo?" 
> 
> There's something unusual about their face, and it's not just the way they wince as they feel around. It takes Sans a minute to get it, but he feels like kicking himself once he realizes. The kid's eyes: usually all pupil, dilated right to the edge. They're tiny now, like they're staring into fire. Sans doesn't know if that's good or bad. But they look at him like they've never looked at him before. Maybe they haven't. "Hurts," they whisper, then start coughing hard. 

This is mostly a play off the sprite, Frisk's eyes and all. But it's also an indicator that they're not really seeing a whole lot. This isn't the same as their issue with actually needing glasses and so there's probably a lack of clarity on this. I'd probably strike the bit about the pupils.  

> "I bet," says Sans, then turns to pick up the tea from the ground. He takes the kid's hands and squeezes them around the mug, folding the fingers around it. He eases his hands back, little by little, making sure the mug isn't dropping. "You got that? Careful, it's still hot. So I'm not gonna ask what you were doing out there, or why you had my things. I mean I get the first part. Easy to forget that kind of human stuff, but it makes sense. The second, well, I guess I'm more of a fashion plate than I figured?" He laughs, sort of. 

As always, Sans asks questions (even rhetorically) he knows the answers to in order to fish for information. See the canonical chat at Grillby's. This scene actually is sort of an echo of that chat. 

I figure at some point not long after the close of this story, he quietly takes Frisk aside and just tells them to pee in the shower. It's not necessary to write that scene because really it's not something I _particularly_ wanted to linger on in any kind of detail but it's definitely something that Frisk themself would not do without prompting. They're very much... trying to remain unobtrusive while they stay in this house.  

> The kid shuts their eyes tight, and Sans watches them forcibly set their jaw. Not what they expected, huh? "But what I do wanna know is how you gashed your head wide open like that and kicked my shoe halfway across the road. You get into a bit of a fight, kid?" 

And yeah, here we have Sans reading that reaction.  

> They shake their head, over and over and over again, tea splashing against their fingers. Sans notices they hold on still, even as their fingers redden from scalding. He gently lifts the mug away and puts it down, just out of reach. 

Scalding is probably too strong a word to have used here. But yep, here's Sans not really thinking ahead when it comes to dealing with a kid in this state.  

> "Hey, hey," Sans says. "I'm not mad. Just trying to figure out what happened. Just nod or shake your head for me, okay? Just once. More than that and you could tear that cut back open. Just take it easy. I'm not tossing you out into the snow. My brother'd kill me if he found out I did a thing like that." 

But he is good at not pushing very hard. And of course, the 'my brother'd kill me' line, which comes up in variant form near to the very end.  

> The kid stills, but watches him even closer. Sans sighs. "Look, kid, do you trust me? No, wait. Wrong question. Do you think I'd tell you something that I knew wasn't true when I said it?" 

It is the wrong question because Frisk does not, in fact, trust Sans, and Sans knows it. Frisk never fully does in this story, honestly-- they do enough, in the end, but they're always very slightly put off.  

> Their lips move just a tiny bit, working through the words. The kid tries a few times, then shakes their head, once. 
> 
> "Okay, that's something. So I'll say it again: I'm not mad at you. Nobody's mad at you. I'm not gonna throw you out of here for telling me the truth. You following?" Sans waits, then the kid nods, smaller this time. They wince a little. "Okay then. You get into a bit of a fight out there, kid?" 
> 
> The kid actually cringes as they nod, whites of their eyes showing, and that does honestly kind of hurt. Sans lets it go all the same. Not the kid's fault. That much he's sure of, at least. "So let's see if I've got the right order of things. Just shake your head if I get it wrong. You go and you grab the pair of shoes and jacket that're closest to the front of the closet. Go outside, to your left, around out back. Then, you know, whatever. You start to come back. Something jumps you there, yeah?" 
> 
> This part's easy. Only one way it could have gone. Sans waits for the kid to make a tiny nod before continuing. "I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it was some kinda flower?" 

He may not have full cognisance of prior resets, but he certainly knows _of_ Flowey, who has by this point done his making 'friends' with Papyrus thing. This is a guess on his part. But it's an educated one.  

> If Sans didn't have a lot of practice catching tiny moments, slicing them down into fractions of fractions of time, he'd have missed it. Instead he catches the emotion flashing through the blank brown eye, the tiny spark of hope that gets smothered and dies, probably before the kid even feels it was ever there. _How old is this kid, even?_ It had taken Sans the equivalent of years to be able to lose hope before even feeling it. 

I think he's misreading here. It's not that they're losing hope so much as that Frisk is actively trying to dispel it themself; they're very much in a state where they can't see a way out of their situation and doing anything other than holding things down where they are is going. In that situation, hope is an enemy-- a distraction. Sans would probably recognize it, if it occurred to him that anyone else felt as trapped as he did.  

> "G-g-grabbed," says the kid, tripping on the words. They're shaking as they get the word out, but then they try for another. "V-vines." They stop short, gagging on the air, choking on what seems like nothing at all. Sans leans forward, lifting a hand to try and-- what? What is there even to do? But the kid grabs his hand and holds on tight until the fit passes. 

And again, Frisk pretty much has to fight for every bit of control they can get here.  

> It's enough to start putting pieces together. But it's just as clear to Sans that the more he pushes at once, the harder it'll get. And the kid's in rough shape right now. "One more, then you have your tea," he says. He works his jaw back and forth as he thinks it over. Definitely more complicated than they anticipated. But this seems like a kind of progress? He barely remembers what _that_ feels like. 
> 
> Inside his pocket, his phone buzzes. Sans picks his question. "Just how tired are you, kid?" Another buzz. 

Okay, this question. Is a question with a very specific intent. In essence, he is sort of recognizing that Frisk is fighting against _something_ , though he can't quite tell what as yet. So he's trying to get more information without giving away how much he knows, because he doesn't really know how dangerous Frisk is as yet. There's something friendly there, to be sure, but there's also the being who killed Snowdin forest and the ruins. So, he knows he's got the friendly with him right now: the question is actually asking how long they think they can hold out.  

> The kid rubs the back of their hand against their cracked lips. Papyrus sends Sans a third text message. The kid doesn't try to hide the effort it takes, but they pull out an exhausted smile, manage to hold onto it for three good seconds, before their face blanks again. 

And the message received is, more or less, 'a while'. But they are tired, very tired.  

> Okay. He can work with that. Even if the sentiment hits a little too close to home. But hey, at least someone's putting in effort, and that someone's not him. "Careful, kid," says Sans, picking up the lukewarm tea and waiting for the kid to accept it. One at a time, their fingers curl around the mug. "You sleep too much and my brother'll think I'm being a bad influence on you." 
> 
> He pulls his phone out of his pocket, starts to finally text a response to Papyrus, when a single hoarse sound emerges from the kid sitting next to him.
> 
> Sans thinks it's a laugh. Now he _knows_ they're getting somewhere.

 Sans, of course, does value laughter. And he remembers when they didn't so much as react to any of his jokes, in the forest.

* * *

 

**Incident Report Form #TI0005**

_Fill out all fields in full using a blue ballpoint pen. Submit the top three sheets to your supervisor and retain the bottom (pink) for your records._

 So I looooove me some bureaucracy in stories. It's like a disease. This is actually sort of formatted after the stylings of request for leave forms at my old government job. Particularly that it's a form in quadruplicate.

 Anyway this form actually predates the graph-- I drew the graph to help elucidate what I was getting at here. I thought it might be a fun thing to add; I literally just sort of slapped it together once I finished writing the rest of the fic. Oops. 

> **Name:** \--
> 
> **Employee Number:** 0
> 
> **Supervisor's Name:** \--
> 
> **Contact Number:** \--
> 
> **Date of Incident (mmddyyyy):** \--
> 
> **Supplemental Date Coordinates (xx:yy:zz):** \--

One notes here that this is very very much written in the style of someone writing notes for themself and not with the intent of anyone ever reading them. They're skipping over information they assume they know and only writing down the pertinent bits. One might also suggest a modest concern of infosec with the heavy amount of abbrevations... or it could also just the writer being lazy. 

> **Who was present for the incident?:** P. a. f.                    k. (3 actors?)

Papyrus. Anomaly. Flower. (an afterthought) Kid. Query to self: between the anomaly, the flower, and the kid, are there three actors here, and not two?

This is more or less derived from that Flowey starts the temporal stuff, and he's supposing that the anomaly is the Frisk/Chara combination. That's... probably a bit too much of a leap for him to make; I should probably have picked a different designator. 

> **In your own words, please provide a detailed timeline of events. Use additional pages if necessary.**
> 
> spike @ anchor pt 1

Basically this section is a textual version of the graph with Sans' annotations. So, my detailed info about it is going to be here. All of these 'spikes' are referring to determination, which is what's being measured.

'Anchor points' are saves and it's not that the spikes are the act of saving, but they're being referred to as relational points. This is actualy Frisk landing and dying and coming back amalgamated, which one could arguably call a reset. 

> a, f activity
> 
> the usual 

So this 'the usual'... again, owes a lot more to Flowey's general doings than any prior runs, but enough people took it as signs of prior runs that I'd want to rework that statement some. 

> 3 more spikes @ anchor pt 3 

Nearest save point is the one outside Toriel's house. Three reloads here. Neither was I ever very consistent about the difference between resetting and reloading. I probably should have been. 

> bg noise increases @ 2nd spike 

Frisk putting up a fight. 

> a leaves ruins
> 
> the usual
> 
> P&a meet
> 
> massive bg noise increase
> 
> ~~k is created?~~ ~~k wakes up?~~ k appears
> 
> k stands down 

The Snowdin genocide through to Sans' first observation of Frisk as a person. 

> incomplete spike-- asymptote line on former peak?

Chara attempts to reset, Frisk chokes it, and will shut out any future attempts. 

> k follows P home
> 
> baseline bg noise increases 300% & stabilizes there 

This could actually mean any number of things. The gist is that the ambient determination levels go a lot higher. Is it from Frisk trying to hold everything? Chara's constant pressure? Something else? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 

> possible to map failed spikes to k's behaviour?
> 
> activity from f, (activity from a?), multiple spikes choked

And this would be the events of Nobody Home; during the fight, Chara's making multiple attempts to play for reset. And failing. 

> k in bad shape after
> 
> k lucid 
> 
> k confirms k as source of choke?

Sans at least is reading something into Frisk's smile and laugh. At least, he's willing to speculate this far.  

> **Please supply any additional information about the incident that you feel would be helpful.**
> 
> **no more resets since k started acting?**
> 
> this sounds like work 

This is the important thing: a major theory presented by this work is that absent the threat of reset, Sans will feel more inclined to act. 

> **Date:** \--
> 
> **Signature:** s

Points of note here that aren't covered above: that's a real coffee stain, and that's a real ketchup stain. a1-a6 are every save point in the game thus far and we are assuming they are all being used. The double-barred D is a symbol I basically invented. Note the 'hi' and the doodle of Papyrus for where Sans and Papyrus both enter. 

The last five failed resets at the end are all from this entry. The one just after the Papyrus doodle would be during Human, and the two in between are probably either of no consequence at all or happened around when Chara was managing to chat with Flowey. 

The arrowed Td (vector) is discontinuous linear time; to wit, time as experienced by the reference point; in this case, Frisk. Effectively, it's real-experienced play time, uncorkscrewing resets and reloads into a straight thing. We could call this a Gaster Transform if we were being cute. The time scaling is not great, tbh. Do not attempt to math the graph. I've had people attempt to math the graph. It did not work. 

So visually it's based on FFT output of AM signals on an osciliscope. We'll later how my failing out of an electronic engineering technology program has been handy here. 

So that's notes for Nobody Home. I'm also gonna point you toward my other fic that I've started: [Never So Alone As With You](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5611237) which covers the Toriel/Asgore breakup. Unlike with Holding Pattern, I'm not promising a happy ending. In fact, we know exactly that this is not going to happen.


	3. Appendix C: Feedback Loop

This is really where I started planning ahead for real. Nobody Home was shooting from the hip besides setting out the overall goals. Here's where I really looked at the lay of the land and use that to plot a clear course forward.

> **_Hysteresis_** _is the time-based dependence of a system's output on present and past inputs. The dependence arises because the history affects the value of an internal state. To predict its future outputs, either its internal state or its history must be known._

This is straight-up just c&p from Wikipedia. Normally I ran with the expectation that, given this work is being read in a web browser, people would just pop clearly real things into google or wikipedia if they didn't get it, because that's what I do. But this is a pretty technical term-- I encountered it in the context of my circuits courses. It is used here in the sense that Sans is trying to find information about what happened before Frisk showed up.

Thing is too when you're setting up a circuit with hysteresis you're connecting the output back to the input. It's a feedback loop. Frisk feels terrible, Chara hammers on the things that make them feel terrible, making them feel worse, back to start of the sentence.

* * *

 

> _ what we've got here is a failure to communicate _

Heavy-handed, of course, but what can you do. It certainly sums up one of the central obstacles of these early bits.

> It's like living with a corroded bomb. It's going to go off, eventually, but there's no way to tell when exactly the faulty connections are going to fire. The tension feels like ants crawling up his spinal column.

Not really happy with these similes and this paragraph is way overloaded with them. I'd want to rework this paragraph.

> But he can get used to anything, really. Sans figures the kid's finally worked out jokes. Not puns, not so much-- if the kid's listening at all when he makes those, they just spend the whole time sounding out the words, far as he can tell. But the one about the elephant hiding in a strawberry patch got something like a smile out of the kid. Nothing like a good non sequitur.

Spoilers, this is based on a pithy tumblr post that's like "'I'm used to it' is one of the saddest things you can say". The phrase stuck around in my head.

> Feels almost normal. That worries him some. Kind of like the time when he realized he'd gotten used to the looming threat of time unwinding, undoing everything back to its anchor, only now with the bonus threat of the kid going on a killing spree. Again. (He doesn't think, much, about the likely first victim of that; it makes his metacarpals itch. It would not be a good time, for anyone.)

Oh, here's that reference to metacarpals. And yeah if Frisk went off while living there, the first one to die would be Papyrus. So we get one of the fic's rare, oblique 'bad time' references.

> Well, probably that risk had always been there. But how could he even tell?
> 
> It'd help if he knew anything he knew how to use. Or how to  _ get _ that information. The kid's of limited help-- might be they could be more useful  _ if _ he knew what to ask. And they're not stable enough for him to be particularly satisfied with just letting it go, for both the kid's sake and everyone else's.
> 
> So he's got a black box to deal with. A really fragile black box with 'contents under pressure' written on the side that also rattles ominously on a regular basis. And it's not even his birthday.

This is a little bit sarcastic for Sans. On the other hand, he's not trying to be funny, so I'm not terribly concerned by it.

> He's got a pretty good eyewitness account of most of what happened after the kid left the ruins, to wit, his own. But as far as he can tell, ever since the kid left, time's been going on a straight-line path.
> 
> He shortcuts his way to the ruins. Seems as good a place as any to look for what he can find.

So, we've got Sans reasonably believing no reset is coming any time soon. This should be enough to poke him into doing some casual investigation.

> Sans' footsteps don't echo in the empty house, not with his good rubber-soled sneakers, not on the soft, dusty carpeting. Ordinary dust, from air and neglect. It's cozy and distantly familiar. He tries not to touch anything as he looks around, leaning back to see the top layer of the bookshelf.
> 
> In the kitchen, there are child-sized footprints in the dust, old enough that they're starting to dust over, too. They lead up to the counter, standing in front of a pie. Only one slice is missing, and the crust has gone rock-solid, but the rest looks fine. Sans dabs his pinky into the filling and tastes it. Butterscotch, and a bit of cinnamon, and a lot of dust. He shoves his hands in the pockets and leaves the kitchen.

So the footprints would be from Human; the floor wouldn't have dusted over during the game-- and I did make sure to make it clear that it's dust-dust and not remains-dust. Because that is so often a point of silliness... but with the two distinct types of dust it's worthwhile to make it clear, so I don't mind doing it here. The crust going stale is probably a bit iffy what with the way monster food doesn't go bad but staleness is different from rot. Figured it would be fine.

Of course, the place is familiar because he's been to Asgore's place. At some point, I'm sure, anyway.

> He trudges past the living room and into the other hall. Some impulse leads him to skip the first door and go for the second. The shut door's kept the worst of the dust away, making this bedroom look nearly still lived in. A bucket of snails by the desk, a queen-sized bed. Casual interest as a collector induces him to look into the sock drawer. He picks out one, hand-knitted and striped, and pockets it.

Don't ask me how those snails are doing, though.

So, this scene. This scene's here for me. I've got a weird relationship with shipping; I'm not terribly interested in romance as a genre of writing, be it prose or film or whatever. Nothing against it, but it's not my bag. Let's just say that when I ship I'm not looking for something idealized or romanticized and leave it at that; you all know where to find me to hear me go off on the subject.

But I have a great deal of fondness for Sans/Toriel. For a lot of reasons that there's no real need to go into here. I'm probably going to do a one-shot, when I'm done the current project. An apology to them both, kinda, heh.

But this scene is here, for me, to hammer the nails into the coffin of that ship, as far as this continuity and this story goes.

I get self-indulgent sometimes. Oh well. Won't be the last, or the most egregious case.

> Sans steels himself before looking at the open book on the desk. When he realizes it's a diary, he feels a bit awkward, but he settles his attention on a date marked by a circle.
> 
> "Heh..." he says, turning away. "Heh... yeah. Bonely. That was a good one. Sorry, lady. Your majesty, I guess. For what it's worth I think the kid is, too. I guess that's not worth much after all. Sorry. Hope it goes better for you next time."
> 
> But he stops before leaving the room and walks back to the desk. He picks up a pencil and flips the pages ahead, looking for today's date. Once there, he skritches, in loose, sloppy lettering:
> 
> _ What kind of art do skeletons like? Skullpture. _
> 
> And he shuts the diary.

I remember some speculation that this was some sort of contingency against potential resets or something. Nah. It's a good-bye, and nothing more. Something for what might have been.

> He turns and leaves, only now going into the first bedroom. Most of what's here is old, old enough for Sans to rule it out entirely as being meaningful: shoes and toys that look like they haven't been played with in years. But the bed's been slept in. Made, but slept in. Sans knows a good rumple when he sees one.
> 
> The pillowcase is salt-stained all over and has some faded rust-brown speckles all over it. When he picks up the pillow, he can see faint little scratches in the headboard's finish. Looks like fingernails, scrabbling for purchase, by his best guess. And here, a knotted tuft of hair in the crevice between mattress and headboard.

So the save is probably before going into Toriel's the first time. Which means there's one night spent at Toriel's. This would be just before the fourth death. Frisk's last real struggle before going compliant for the gap between Toriel and Papyrus. Pulled hair, scratching, crying, mostly.

> So. When the kid came out of here, they had already slaughtered everyone in the ruins and was ready to start on the forest. But the pie  _ had _ gotten through to the kid somehow, he knew that already. And in here, signs of a struggle. Probably a quiet one.
> 
> Then Sans thinks back to some of the only good info he's managed to get his hands on lately, and he thinks:  _ three times _ . He shudders.

Three resets but four deaths, not that Sans could have known that... he can guess, though. Still, the count sort of screwed me up a few times.

> Doesn't give him the whys, but he feels okay penciling this in as a definite emergence of the kid's current state, prior to Papyrus. Makes it a bit less likely that the kid's faking, he figures. Not that he had that one very far on the table in the first place, but he's not in much of a position to be ruling things out.
> 
> There's probably more to investigate down here, so Sans starts walking. Less likely to be fruitful, all told, but he's already gone out of his way to be here, so better check it out now rather than have to come all the way back.
> 
> One last thing he wants to check, anyway. There's still the starting point, way in back.

So at this point Sans is establishing a hypothesis the Frisk he's dealing with now is not the Frisk who genocided the ruins and Snowdin forest. This, as we learn later, is not terribly accurate, but it's also more accurate than some of the alternatives. I think he ends up leaning toward possession at some point, which, again, is not  _ in _ accurate.

* * *

 

> Takes a careful look. Frowns as red and black blotches swim but catches a glimpse of a number through the haze. Lifts other hand and holds up four fingers.

I hadn't quite worked out the nature of Frisk's vision troubles yet. Could probably refined here; at this point they're consciously trying to keep their eyes out of focus, too. Keeping Chara from being able to see very well, and all.

> "Fours?" Voice loud, but doesn’t hurt. Warm and no edges. Easier to think around it. "Nyeh heh heh. There are no fours in my hand, human! Instead, you must  _ go fish _ !"

It was actually really hard to think of a card game basic enough that Frisk could handle it. And here it was, right in front of me.

> Reaches out until cards underneath fingers. Picks out one, lifts it and slides it with the rest. Lowers head, peeks a little and finds number. Six. Wait. Yes. Two of them. Pulls first one out, then second. Places them on table. Smiles, looks up, uses eyes all the way for a second. Looks happy.
> 
> _ Good _ at numbers.
> 
> No,  _ I'm _ good at numbers. You can barely count to three. Should I make you try?

So, here we have Chara directly addressing Frisk. I've said before not everything Chara does is subtle. This isn't... because it's a distraction. It's a distraction to keep Frisk occupied so Chara can more easily undermine any sense of self-esteem or resistance or indeed just any sense of self.

Wouldn't change this even now with the direction it ends up taking. They are an exceptionally cruel kid, and canonically manipulative as fuck.

Not that manipulativeness is inherently a bad thing-- Sans and Papyrus both, again canonically do it for good reasons and good results, but there's definitely a selfish intent here.

> Fingers shake just a bit. Tries to ignore it, tries to listen outside instead. Misses the first part. "... have any nines!"
> 
> Examines cards one at a time. Squints, but numbers swim, can't read. Shuts eyes, opens them, tries again. Still can't. Laughing inside, somewhere. Keeps mouth shut.

Partly inherent vision problems, partly Chara wresting enough control to keep the eyes blurred.

> "You can do it, human! Find your nines and give them to me!"
> 
> Fingers move without wanting it. Picks card and holds it out. Feels same smile as before. Wants to be sick everywhere.

An intimidation tactic, of all things. Chara doesn't actually have a whole lot of physical control to do things Frisk consciously doesn't want to do (hence a lot of the lack of coordination and general struggle) but something like that? Easy to do and make Frisk feel like they weren't trying to do it.

> What would you ever do without me?
> 
> Easier to relax, to let it happen. So easy. Looks at edge of table. Could hit head? Make it stop, maybe?

Yeah both these lines are probably entirely in Chara's voice.

> Not sure where that comes from. Head still hurts from fight. Takes big breath. Shivers. Doesn't do it. Won't.
> 
> Looks at cards again. Can read them now. Just imagining earlier? Puts cards down to hold up seven fingers. Feels them shake.
> 
> "I do have a seven!" Turns over hand for card. Fingerbones careful, places card so it doesn't drop. "You know, human, I'm very impressed with your progress through my signature being-a-better-person program (patent pending)."

If you don't imagine Papyrus actually saying "open parentheses patent pending close parentheses" I don't want to know you.

> You're slipping away by inches. Fingers close around card, easily. You'll let go. Puts card on table.
> 
> "Just think! It wasn't all that long ago when you were still being held back by your cultural aversion to puzzles!"
> 
> Lip quivers. Then when you do, I think we'll stay here for a while. Lifts cards, all one motion. You've made such good friends here.
> 
> "And look at us now! Playing cards together!"
> 
> Pulls out matching seven. I'm going to kill them. Rubs two cards against each other. Not just once. Smoothly puts them down.
> 
> "You've come so far... one day soon, I might even be able to tell Undyne I've found a human! And then you can be friends!"
> 
> I'm going to kill them, and then I'm going to reset things. Squeezes eyes shut tight. I'm going to kill them, over, and over, and over again.
> 
> "But I can tell you're not ready to meet her yet. So that's why I've prepared some ultra-special P̶̷̸̲̲̿a̶̷̸̲̲̿p̶̷̸̲̲̿y̶̷̸̲̲̿r̶̷̸̲̲̿u̶̷̸̲̲̿s̶̷̸̲̲̿ life advice for you (also patent pending)!"

So yeah, obscuring the name here was kind of an impulse move, but it seemed the right thing to do. It ended up being critical.

So this bit was hard to write, what with the naked cruelty on display here. Chara needs Frisk to either go away or to comply with Chara's wishes at this point, so pretty much everything is oriented to either grinding Frisk into the dirt or making them entirely reliant on Chara. Either will do.

> Doesn't want to cry right now. I'm going to kill them, and they're going to scream, and you're going to scream with them. Trying so hard not to cry, squeezing eyes shut.
> 
> "Whenever life gets you down, you should always start by asking yourself: What would P̶̷̸̲̲̿a̶̷̸̲̲̿p̶̷̸̲̲̿y̶̷̸̲̲̿r̶̷̸̲̲̿u̶̷̸̲̲̿s̶̷̸̲̲̿ do in this situation? And you should do whatever it is I would do! And that will help you down the path of becoming a really cool person!"
> 
> I'm going to keep killing them until you're done screaming, until you're done crying, until every pathetic little scrap of you that's left is just curled up in a ball like the worthless trash that you are. Feels tears start to escape. Sniffles.
> 
> "Uh... human? That's not what I would do. But you can figure it out. Just keep trying!"
> 
> I'm going to kill them until there isn't enough left of you to resist. Stands up. Wobbles on feet. Hands on table, holds steady.
> 
> "Yes! Good choice! Standing up is one of the most important parts of the P̶̷̸̲̲̿a̶̷̸̲̲̿p̶̷̸̲̲̿y̶̷̸̲̲̿r̶̷̸̲̲̿u̶̷̸̲̲̿s̶̷̸̲̲̿ method! I stand up all the time!"
> 
> Tries to ignore it. Walks around table. Sniffles one more time. Wipes nose. Opens arms. Moves them wide and-- hugs, warm. Not safe. But warm. Bony arms come around, tight but not too tight.
> 
> "One of the most powerful moves in my repertoire! You're getting there! If you face a truly unsurmountable problem, you should begin by offering a hug! I believe in you, human!"
> 
> Oh, and when I'm bored with it, I should give you a present. That's what friends are for, right? I should thank you for helping me have such a great time. I've got just the thing:  _ I'll give you their names. _

Should have ended the scene here, cut the following sentence, but I had an early reliance on the determination lines; not needed overall, I don't think. I still think this bit is one of the single cruelest things I've ever written.

> Holds on tight until the crying stops. Stays determined.

Or cut at least the last sentence. Holding on is good. Papyrus is, as ever, the real hero, even if Sans is off figuring out important stuff.

* * *

> It's nearly a beautiful little spot. Golden flowers grow wild in a neat rectangle, thriving somehow despite being unmaintained. The last time he was here, the flowers were dying. The last time was here, a child had spilled a queen's dust on them, and struggled for something meaningful to say. The last time he was here, he'd turned away and said under his breath the only words he could think of, for a friend he'd never seen.

I don't know what those words are.

> Sans can't find this place beautiful. Not now. He can think of a hundred and one places he'd rather be, and some of them involve dress codes. But right now, this is where he needs to be.

Remember Sans and dress codes, heh. Well, I think it makes sense that a dress code would be the worst thing in the world for him. Worst ordinary thing, anyway.

> He walks a circle around the flower patch, looking straight up. After about fifteen, twenty feet, the cavern walls start narrowing, but he can't see where, or if, they converge. Sans pulls his phone out of his pocket and takes a second to activate the flashlight.  He holds the back of the phone up high, craning his neck to try and see how high up it goes.

As someone who mostly writes premodern settings, adding cellphones does some interesting stuff to what you can and can't do. It's mostly a boon in this story though there are certainly multiple places where characters just not paying attention to their phones is important.

It's usually Sans though so it's fine, it's perfectly in character and not forced.

> The hole narrows more the higher it goes, but the light eventually vanishes in the gloom before it hits the top. He ticks the light off and puts the phone back in his pocket, rocking back and forth on his heels as he thinks. No matter what, it's a long, long way up. An even longer way down.
> 
> Probably worth seeing if any daylight at all can get in. Sans pulls his phone back out, and starts flipping through his apps. He finds one he can use easily enough, with only a couple tweaks.

And here too we get to have some fun; there's no need for Sans to be hauling measuring stuff around if he can use something that takes advantage of a phone's camera lens.

> He puts a pin in that thought long enough to text:  _ hey pap could be late tonight. found a great place to nap. should be back before storytime but dont sweat it if im late _
> 
> Then, as an afterthought, he logs into one of his parachute accounts on Undernet. He sends:  _ @coolskeleton95 great spaghetti recipes _ [ _click here_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) _! _ and schedules it to go out in two hours. Sans chuckles under his breath, and only then starts setting up for work.

ngl the second I realized you could hotlink in ao3 postings i started vibrating with glee

dogsong might have been more appropriate but really... call this a rare bit of reader participation; isn't he really pranking you, the reader?

> Simple enough: use the camera's light sensor and have an alarm go off if it goes above a certain amount, or a certain amount of time has passed, twelve hours in this case. He finds a spot in the flower patch as close to the centre of the hole in the ceiling as he can estimate, and carefully bends the flowers aside around the phone, making sure the camera lens is unobscured.
> 
> Then he sits down against the cavern wall, and settles in to waiting. Sans rummages through his pockets until he comes up with a packet of ketchup, which he splits open and squeezes out into his mouth. The empty foil, he shoves in his pocket.
> 
> He pulls out an oversize deck of cards afterward, and starts shuffling, steady and thoroughly. Not a consistent or reliable testing device, but he'd might as well see what he can see.

Okay, this bit... I'm not a huge fan of it. The cards and the symbolism are a bit too rooted in real-world stuff. But I needed a divination method and I needed one that I knew well enough I could write it. I'd love to find something else I could do here in place of it but it gets the job done, I suppose.

> The trick to anything at all dealing with ripples across timelines is that it's wildly susceptible to interference. Magic, blind luck, anything at all, really. Collecting information about either future or past potentialities is like sieving glitter from sand. Whole sciences had to be invented to figure out how to do that task.
> 
> Sans cuts the cards twice, then stacks them. Right now, in his hands, he's got one of the crudest methods-- effectively, using a fork instead of a sieve. But maybe if he's lucky, doing this here in this place will give him something good. He sweeps some dust from the ground in front of him, and starts placing cards. One card for the kid in the centre, then one on top. One sideways across. Below, above, side to side. Four on the right, all in a vertical line. He sets the deck just to the side, just in case.

I do like his explanation of the methods, though.

So this spread is called a celtic cross. It's one of the most famous spreads and it's also kind of looked down on by people who know what they're doing with the cards because it's really kind of an unfocused spread. It's all over the place in terms of what information it quote-unquote provides. Theoretically it's for answering a question but it covers a situation very broadly, and for most purposes, you can find a better tool for the job.

Here, though, we want something kind of scattershot and unspecific; Sans isn't entirely sure what he's looking for but he knows the situation at hand.

> He starts flipping cards, interpreting as he goes: for the kid, oppression, obstacles. The heart of the situation, he gets deception, fear, mistakes. In opposition, he sees hope. Well, that's a good sign, anyway.

Thing about tarot cards is that so long as you know how to massage your symbolism, they can mean whatever you damn well please. There's no wrong reading here so long as it's symbolically correct. There is, however, the meaning that I had in mind when I stacked the deck and worked backwards from to find matching cards.

So we start with the significator; usage of this is modestly controversial. The significator represents the querent in total, or the person the reading is about; in this case, Frisk. Generally you use a nonrandom significator, generally of the major arcana, and removing a major can make people feel like it throws their results off. Me, it's a 78-card deck and I hold no pretenses about there being any real mystic significance to it. One card is no real loss.

There's a few ways of determining what significator to use; some people always use the Fool, the person who taught me cards taught me a numerological method (for myself, I use the Empress, by this method), you can cold-or-warm read your querent to feel out which card is most 'like' them. Or you can do like I prefer, which I feel just sidesteps most of the problems of the significator, and use a fully random draw.

Thus, Frisk is the Ten of Wands. Here, I concur with Sans' assessment of it meaning that it refers to an oppressed person; someone who's very much afraid. Applied to a person this way, it suggests someone under a lot of stress.

The covering card is the Moon. Your cover represents immediate influences. This one's astonishingly straight-forward and again, no qualms with Sans' interpretation on this. Terror, deception, hidden enemies, illusions and mistakes. Chara is miring Frisk in all of these.

Frisk is crossed by the Star. Your crossing card is immediate obstacles impeding the querent. If this is a universally good card it can just simply be an influence. Sans writes it off that way. The Star is not a universally good card (no major arcana cards are)-- we've already covered in the notes for Nobody Home that Frisk views hope as an enemy. The Star can mean hope, it can mean beauty, it can mean inspiration. It can also mean loss, and theft, and abandonment. So Frisk does feel like hope is an enemy, they are fighting against loss and theft-- of what sort, the story doesn't say yet, of course. It is not a good sign.

> At the roots, a woman-- older, cruel-intentioned. Sans reaches for the deck and pulls another card, tossing it atop her, hoping for a little more insight, maybe. He gets violence. Fatalism.

This card is the ground. This is one of the more nebulous positions, another reason why people don't love this spread so much. I prefer to use it as the foundation of the issue, the deepest reasons. I've seen the recent past suggested too but nah, nah, I don't like that here.

So it's the Queen of Swords, reversed. Court cards in the minor suits always represent people, is the way I learned it, so this is in fact representing a person. The Queen of Swords is an intellectual woman without much emotional warmth; she's rarely happy and has usually lost something significant. She is  _ always _ childless (so this was never Frisk's mother); reversal on this card suggests direct ill-will toward the querent.

A tangent on reversals: people who don't know much about tarot loooooooove to over-weight reversals. First off is that they don't completely invert the meaning of cards at all; it's usually an opposition to the upright meaning, and that can suggest a very small difference. Second: they're completely, 100%, entirely optional. A lot of decks don't include reversals in their included booklets (neither of the decks I picked up around the time of writing did!) and a lot of readers like to straight-up ignore them. I like the extra granularity, so I use them, but that's entirely a choice.

One non-standard thing I was taught was that when you draw a court card, you can toss on another card to find out more about how that person relates to the situation. I've never seen anyone else do it like that so welp. The covering card here is the Devil, which is where I say that no card of the major arcana is entirely good or bad. There are a few that people give a bad rap to, and this is one of them. Few ways we can go with this card combo, one of which is crass enough that I won't mention it beyond that. We're looking at a sense of fatalism, being trapped, possibility for violence.

It suggests there's an abusive woman who is not Frisk's mother deep at the heart of matters.

> Sans cracks his knucklebones as he goes for the next, the card above, the one that calls directly for potentialities. Stasis. He flips the next two in rapid succession: the recent past is just ruin, the immediate future speaks to interference, obstructions.

Next card is the crown, which speaks to potential outcomes, the the thing the querent is hoping will happen. Death reversed is absolutely stasis, yeah; no change whatsoever. Which is, in a manner of speaking, what Frisk is going for at this point-- they're keeping Chara in place and not thinking or aiming anywhere beyond that.

In the recent past we have the Lightning-Struck Tower. This is where I stress again that there are no bad cards in the majors. It's very, very easy to write off the Tower as ruin or destruction or whatever. I learned it as the moment of revelation, the bolt from the blue that levels everything and gives you a clean start. It's devastating and it's powerful and well-poised it can be exactly what you need.

If any card in this spread specifically refers to Papyrus, it's this one.

In the immediate future is the eight of Swords. Now. The minors absolutely do have good and bad cards. And if you want to see some really goddamn nasty cards, look up between the 5 and 10 of swords. The eight specifically calls for isolation, it calls for being afraid to move. Danger surrounding and those surrounds keep you from moving. You could move but the circumstances render you afraid to do so. The sensation of being stuck.

> One more card for the kid, for their own take on the situation, and it makes him laugh when he sees the card. A figure bound and hanging from a tree, signifying delay.
> 
> With crude lines done in blue marker, a hoodie's been sketched onto the figure. "Oh, kiddo," he says, and sighs.

This position is the querent's general attitude about the situation. This is the Hanged Man, which can speak to delay, yes, delay and patience and sacrifice. But too, it can speak to wisdom gained through trials, to learning to surrender to your situation, to letting go. Sans' reading is probably the most correct here, in that Frisk is trying for delay and sacrifice. And that's certainly why Sans jocularly drew his hoodie on the card, this his significator. But yeah.

> But he smiles when he turns over the next, the one for the general environment: one cup, overflowing with water. He taps his index finger on it a couple times. "Think that one's you, Pap. That one's all you. You're good for the kid."

The next position is for the environment the querent is in. The ace of cups calls for unconditional love, and certainly Frisk is in an environment where they are cared for-- more cared-for than lies within anything in their memory-- I think Sans here is, as always, selling himself short relative to Papyrus. On the other hand, one might argue that Sans does, in fact, place conditions there, where Papyrus does not. Regardless, it's a nice sentiment for the current environment.

> Hopes and fears are next, second last, and he draws isolation. That leaves only the ultimate outcome, and he groans when he sees the extent to which temporal mechanics have gone out of their way to prank him. Perserverance, he'd call this one normally. In this case?
> 
> Of course it's  _ determination _ .

Next card is the querent's hopes and fears, and this is the Hermit, reversed. This is one of those ones where we emphasize that a reversal is not a case of literally-the-opposite. The Hermit by itself bespeaks a solitary individual, but it's also one who's solitary by choice, to gain some manner of insight. Reversed, the isolation is to no good purpose, someone cut off from the world outside them. Is that what Frisk is currently trying to achieve, with locking down Chara? Or are they afraid of it?

The final outcome, the nine of wands-- yeah you could go a number of ways with it but the obvious is probably the correct one. What that means exactly? Shit, you want precision out of a quote-unquote random selection of eleven out of seventy-eight cards? Nope.

Anyway, this particular reading focuses entirely backwards so there's not a lot of weight on the outcome card. I know I had someone reading a lot into what it meant going forwards but anything of that nature was mostly just fringe benefits.

But the reading goes backwards, because right now, we're taking measurements of prior states in order to predict the system's future output.

> But taken as a whole, it's given him nothing he hasn't already guessed at: a scared kid who'd come out of a bad, bad situation, holding on by a thread. Improvement's there, but hard to reach. He's just about to sweep the cards away when he looks down and squints real hard at a particular combination.
> 
> Stasis. Delay. Perserverance.
> 
> "Kid's definitely stealing my move _ ,"  _ Sans exhales into the cavern air. He's not sure if he's awed or disgusted by it. Not surprised, so much-- he'd pretty much called it already, but he had less on the kid when he'd first guessed it. Not that he's got a lot now, but he's been making progress.

So yeah. Again, the notion was modestly big to the initial thoughts I had.

> So the kid's fighting-- something. Something they don't think they can win against. 

And Chara's slowly wiggling the box over to... well, it's not 'fight', is it?

> Other than that, the cards aren't giving him much, unless he's made a critical mistake in the interpretation or in the question at hand. Both of which are very real possibilities at the best of times, which the present juncture clearly is not.

And of course Sans is missing or glossing over a lot. Not that, I think, it would be very productive at this stage to start probing about that queen of swords draw or that the current Frisk could properly articulate things like what they're fighting.

> Still looking down at the cards, Sans runs things through his head. The kid sleeping on his and Papyrus' couch is  _ probably _ not the thing that slaughtered Snowdin Forest and these ruins. But the same being, somehow. That's a line of thought that only creates more questions than answers.

But the kid sleeping on his couch is  _ absolutely _ the kid that slaughtered the ruins. Snowdin Forest was more of a team effort.

> Sans tsks and wipes the spread, stacking the cards once more and doing a loose shuffle before shoving the deck away in his pocket. Killed some time, anyway. He pulls a magazine out of his hoodie and starts flipping through it.
> 
> By the time he's read the whole thing through three times, including the ads, he hears an insistent beep coming from his phone. Sans pushes to his feet, and goes to turn over the phone, looking at the numbers on the display. He takes a screenshot then looks up again.
> 
> He can tell the difference, barely. Whatever this faint grey haze is, it can't be what the history books meant when they talk about sunlight. But it's the closest he's going to get, and it's what he needs. No lights on his end, that'll just obscure things.
> 
> The sun at zenith over the hole to the underground is a tiny grey pinprick, high in the distance. Almost looks like a speck of dust. He might do the math later, but the actual numbers won't be too important, he doesn't think. It's a long, long, long fall.
> 
> Sans steps off the flowerpatch and turns back to straighten the flowers he'd bent out of the way. So, the opening on the other side can't be that big, or they'd have been swimming in humans this whole time. Couple options for how the kid could get down here, then.

I dunno, but Sans straightening the flowers he'd bent felt a little important to me. Not sure how well I can articulate why, though.

> First, a pure accident. Hard to say how likely that one is without knowing what the hole's like topside. But plausible, very plausible.
> 
> Second, it could have been intentional. Few ways that could go. Option one goes back to being a subset of the accident theory: under-estimating the depth of the drop. Possible, but his gut tells him that's not it. Option two: the kid anchored near the bottom and reset so they were dropping from a safe height.
> 
> Problems with option two: first, it's kind of convoluted. Second, does momentum get preserved when the kid anchors? Sans hasn't got a clue, and if the answer is yes, that would rule this one out entirely. Third: just what would it  _ mean _ for the kid to know about resetting before even falling down? Fourth: Why would the kid want to end up down here? And so on.
> 
> And then there's option three: the kid has a death wish. They fell intentionally, and survived, somehow.

'anchor' is a bit more natural-sounding term to me than save, which is why I went with it. I very studiously avoided the this-is-a-video-game meta aspect because that translates very poorly to prose. This is one of those things where I do look to Pratchett, who said of story-driven comedy and I think specifically the kind of comedy that drives Discworld, is that it's funny because it isn't funny at all to the characters experiencing it. I sort of extrapolate on that because it's very helpful. There's meta-stuff as far as the video game aspect goes, but short of Flowey that doesn't apply to or motivate any of the characters involved (and even with Flowey's approach, it's arguable).

So I avoid anything that even slightly smacks of 'video game'.

> So he has no good explanations for how the kid ended up down here. No leads as to how this started. At best, he's coming away with some more hope that there really is an honestly good kid deep down inside them. And that's not nothing, mind. It's a whole lot of something. But it's kind of a dead end as far as avenues to pursue go.

Important here to establish the position Sans is digging himself up from. It's low, but he's got a direction and as far as it is right now it doesn't really require him to do a whole lot besides think, so that's engaging him.

> Well, he's got some math to do, and maybe sleeping on things will give him a better angle. He checks the time on his phone and winces; definitely past Papyrus' story-time. Better get going-- wait. Something moving close to the ground, in his peripheral vision. Sans turns and strolls back to the flower patch. All pretty golden flowers, staying in a neat spot, but growing wild, covering over the whole rectangle of soil. But there's a subtle little empty patch of dirt visible through the flowers a few inches in from the edge. When he takes a closer look, some of the nearby stems are bent, and one is outright severed.
> 
> And that tiny little exposed patch of dirt looks very much like a hole, collapsed in on itself, with a tiny sprinkle of golden pollen dusted on top.
> 
> "Damn it," says Sans. But nothing to be done for it now. Just needs to be more careful in the future.
> 
> He takes his shortcut home.

So this doesn't actually pan out to much and I think it's fine. Flowey's keeping an eye out, trying to figure out from his angle wtf is going on, because-- as we see later, what he can see doesn't exactly thrill him.

* * *

 

> Sans makes a couple extra stops along the way, just to make sure he shakes the weed on his tailbone. Assuming it's still following him, and that's not a safe bet. But he needed to pick up chips anyway. Chips, and a book of crossword puzzles (maybe he can hide it from Papyrus long enough to get through at least a whole one, before all the answers get helpfully filled in with Zs), a book of Jumbles (some junior, some not), and a colouring book (with word searches!), and a pack of crayons (and okay, he might have secretly swapped the boring colours like 'burnt sienna' for more interesting ones instead).

Burnt sienna's one of those weird crayons that you like just don't have much of a use for until you do, in fact, have a use for it. Here, it was a throw-in.

> He gets inside and kicks his shoes off into the closet, making sure they land further back than the kid's shoes, and steps into his slippers. The living room lights are all out-- kid probably curled up in a corner, he figures-- so he pockets his own book, tosses the colouring book and crayons onto the table, then goes to toss the chips into his half of the fridge.
> 
> There's noise coming from Papyrus' room that he can hear straight down from the bottom of the stairs. The door is ajar, so Sans knocks once before shuffling in.
> 
> "It goes 'Hruuugh!' It is a hippopotamus! That's not my cow!" Papyrus is sitting on the edge of the bed, a book open on his lap, one finger moving under a line of text. The kid's sitting next to him, head pointed intently in the direction of the book. Gotta hand it to him, Papyrus really makes a fantastic hippopotamus noise. But Papyrus stops as soon as he notices Sans come in.

So I'm quoting Thud! here and not the Where's My Cow book released subsequently, because that's more of a story  _ about _ Where's My Cow than actually Where's My Cow instead.

I could say here that I picked this book because selecting Thud!, a book where the main character is at a critical moment late for storytime, a book about fighting off an evil from within, about being stuck with it and needing to stay in control despite its influence, etc, etc.

Instead, I'll say this:

Death of the author, motherfuckers! I picked it so I wouldn't have to write a children's book of my own for this bit.

Ha ha ha you thought I was that clever, the answer is never that clever.

Worked out pretty good though, huh?

> "Hey Pap, kid," says Sans. "Sorry I'm late. You got the story in hand, or should I take over?" It's a tried-and-true method of avoiding uncomfortable questions: just change the subject  _ immediately _ .
> 
> "What do you think, human?" says Papyrus, looking down at the kid. They rub their eyes blearily, but don't respond more than that uncommonly normal gesture. Papyrus soldiers on. "Well, you should do something to make up for sleeping all day! Here!" He thrusts the book out at Sans.
> 
> Sans just shakes his head and takes the book. "Scooch over, kid," he says, and takes a seat between them and Papyrus. "Start over at the beginning, I guess?"

Did the art go here? I think it went here. I'm using my original work copy for this this time because this is logistically surprisingly difficult to deal with. Anyway Frisk's slowly establishing themself here, etc.

> And so with Papyrus looking over his shoulder and the kid under his arm, Sans tells the story of the missing cow. From sheep, to horse, to hippopotamus, and so on, he details the painstaking search of this one person for a missing cow, complete with all the barnyard noises Sans can muster. Impressions aren't really his strong suit, but that's not the point at all. Papyrus stays in suspense, and the kid tracks the movement of his fingerbone below the words.
> 
> Finally, he gets to the dramatic climax of the story. "Is that my cow? It goes 'Mooooo!'" Even the kid's into it, Sans thinks, mouth in an approximation of an o-shape. "Yes! That's my cow! Hooray, hooray, it's a wonderful day, for I have found my cow!"

So I hadn't actually read Thud! in a couple years. I did dig out my copy to make sure my quotes were accurate.

> Sans shuts the book then returns it to Papyrus' shelf, while the kid slowly pushes off the racecar bed. They wobble a bit as they stand, but steady out once they're upright. Sans stifles a yawn. "Well, I guess it's bedtime for everyone, then. You're having your nap now too, Papyrus?"
> 
> "I can't believe you're going back to sleep," says Papyrus. "I thought you were out napping all day! Instead of working!"
> 
> Sans picks up the kid with a little 'oof', and says, "Napping's hard work, okay. You could say it leaves me... bone tired." Papyrus groans loudly. "But thanks for keeping an eye on the kid today. I know your schedule's tight."

Sans, of course, gets about as much actual sleep as Papyrus does; you need to dig around for some obscure lines in the game and it's never outright stated but it's there.

> "No, the human's getting a lot better at being friendly!" says Papyrus. "Aren't you, human? We played cards and watched TV and had an important bonding moment!"
> 
> "Yeah? That so?" Sans looks to the kid, now that they're more at eye level. "You and my brother have a good time today, kiddo?"
> 
> A long pause, but that's nothing new from the kid. After a few moments, they nod a couple times, the motion ruined by a yawn coming out in the middle.
> 
> "Yeah, he's a lot of fun," says Sans. "But I think that's my cue to go put them to bed. I'll go to work tomorrow, okay?"
> 
> "You better," says Papyrus. "You still haven't recalibrated your puzzles!"
> 
> Sans carries the kid toward the door. "Yeah, I'll get on it. Night, Pap."

Sure he will.

> Papyrus shuts the door behind him. Sans carries the kid to the living room, bypassing the stairs. He puts them down on the couch, pulling up the good cushion and down behind the couch for the blanket. The kid'd just end up on the floor otherwise, and that just wouldn't be right.
> 
> "Hey, kid..." says Sans, tucking the kid in under the blankets. The kid looks up at him, blinking sleepily. Sans sighs. "... nah. Wish I knew what to ask you. You're kinda frustrating, kiddo."

At this point, yeah, Frisk is taking pretty much everything very hard and very personally.

> They hang their head at that, and Sans regrets it. He moves to ruffle the kid's hair and stops short when he remembers how hair-shy the kid is. Instead he just lifts the kid's chin. "Don't worry about it. Hey, why'd the elephant stand on top of a marshmallow?"
> 
> The kid cocks their head, looking blank-eyed up at him. Sans delivers the punchline: "So she wouldn't fall into the hot chocolate." The kid makes a sound something like a hiccup. He thinks it's a giggle.

don't judge me i love elephant jokes

> "There you go," says Sans. "Get a smile out of you yet." He hesitates, then adds, "Look, kid. You're doing good. Can you remember that for me?"
> 
> Now, that elicits a reaction. The kid's expression starts rearranging itself into one of seriously intense concentration: something like a jeweler engraving into titanium. They hold that look for two full minutes, then nod, right before their face blanks again. Interesting.

In this, it's mostly just that it's  _ really hard _ for frisk to remember things; they're just making sure.

... because when's the last time they ever would have heard that?

> Sans stands up. He arranges the blankets a little more cozily around the kid. "Sleep tight, kiddo," he says, and heads upstairs.

* * *

**The One About the Strawberry Patch**

> **Q:** How do elephants hide in strawberry patches?
> 
> **A:** They paint their toenails red.

i like it ok   
  


* * *

 

**Sans' Cards**

> [img that i am probably not bothering to link here mmmm effort]
> 
> Significator: 10 of Wands
> 
> Cover: The Moon
> 
> Cross: The Star
> 
> Ground: The Queen of Swords (Reversed) + The Devil
> 
> Crown: Death (Reversed)
> 
> Recent Past: The Tower
> 
> Near Future: 8 of Swords
> 
> Self: The Hanged Man
> 
> Environment: Ace of Cups
> 
> Hopes and Fears: The Hermit (Reversed)
> 
> Outcome: Nine of Wands

I've been over this already so nothing more to say on this; the deck is the Shadowscapes Tarot by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. Took a long time for me to find a deck I really liked; got this at the same time as a Mucha-styled deck but the cards aren't notated so I don't like working with it as much.

So that's Hysteresis; less to say here because there's less preamble needed and this is almost entirely setup. We're correctly oriented now, things start taking off next round.


	4. Appendix D: Counting Bodies Like Sheep

> _go back to sleep!_  

So let's talk about Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm of the War Drums. It's one of two original songs off of A Perfect Circle's eMOTIVe, a fantastic album. Like everything else on the album, lyrically, it's an overtly political song. In its original context. [Have some lyrics](http://www.metrolyrics.com/counting-bodies-like-sheep-to-the-rhythm-of-the-war-drums-lyrics-a-perfect-circle.html). So the secret here is that the song is basically entirely applicable to the fic if you consider it as being in Chara's voice, to Frisk, because I write like a teenage edgelord from the late 90s. 

Anyway here's where I started choosing my epigrams with more care, and here's also where I knew the exact beats for the rest of the fic: Undyne, Alphys, Asgore and Ending. Mettaton was never really in the picture here, because there was never really a need for him; Alphys was always gonna have her hands full. 

* * *

>  Sans doesn't really know why he still comes out to his lookout post anymore. It's not like there's anything to patrol for, to guard against. There's nothing more that's going to come out of the ruins, and there's not even the good company around here that there used to be. 
> 
> A delicious aroma wafts up from the portable grill he's got set up on the counter. He lifts the lid long enough to roll the hot dog over and take an admiring glance at the thick bubbles of char that have formed on the outside. Almost ready. Sans pulls a bun out of the bag and opens it, setting it face down on the top layer of the grill. He shuts the lid and rummages around to find his condiments. 
> 
> Nah, he knows exactly why he's out here. Part of it's just that it's quiet out here, and the air is clearer than his room. But mostly it means a lot to Papyrus that he clock in out here. 
> 
> That, eh. Maybe it shouldn't matter as much as it does to him. But, since he's feeling _extra_ self-honest today, he can admit that Papyrus badgering him so relentlessly for slacking off is one of the things that gets him out of bed in the morning. 

this is probably fine but i feel like it's too heavy-handed. this is one of those bits i inevitably grumble over but leave as-is.  

> Sans pulls the toasted hot dog bun off the grill and lays down a foundation of relish, then two precise squirts of mustard. Satisfied, he picks up the ketchup, points it downward, and starts to _squeeze_. He moves the bottle back and forth over the length of the bun, making a slow count to five. The other condiments vanish beneath that sea of red. The grill-marked bun stands up to this assault valiantly before slowly soaking through. 
> 
> Heh. This situation with the kid must be wearing on him more than he'd thought. That's extended houseguests for you. Sans grabs the hot dog off the grill, ignoring that it's _way too hot_ to be touching with bare fingers, and drops the well-crisped water sausage into the abyss of ketchup. He wipes his fingerbones clean on his jacket, leaving behind a smear of grease and char. 
> 
> Well, not every day's a good day, but no day's a bad day when you've got a hot dog fresh off the grill, skin bubbled and crisp, and slathered in half a bottle of ketchup. He eats it in three bites. That leaves him feeling more like himself. 
> 
> Might as well get some actual work done while he's got the time and headspace. There's measurements he figures he's going to need to take, but he's pretty sure his probe adapter is busted. Luckily this is strictly intratemporal equipment, so it should be perfectly safe to do it out here. Or at all, for that matter. He's not entirely certain a temporal clean room even _exists_ anymore. Ever did exist. Would exist? Something throbs deep inside his skull, and it's not the convolution of grammar. 

at this point I was still holding fast to the 'no gaster' bit but that didn't mean I couldn't plant what was intended to be a red herring, or a potential hook for later use.  

> He shakes it off and reaches into his pocket, coming up with an unassuming black plastic box, just about palm-sized, coaxial connectors on opposite sides. What else does he need? He sets the adapter down and furrows his brow, concentrating as he goes for the inside pockets of his jacket. 
> 
> Sans sets a handheld multimeter and a soldering iron down on top of the stand just a few seconds later. A schematic drawn out on a crumpled napkin comes out of his front pocket. He smoothes it out in front of him, and puts the ketchup bottle on top of it to keep it in place. 
> 
> He goes to pop the box open but after a few fruitless tugs, he turns it over, just to see four gleaming, tiny screws glaring up at him. 
> 
> "Oh for..." he says. "Really? Screwed right out of the box, I guess." He squints more at the screws, trying to gauge their size, then dips into his pocket for a driver. 

hokay this bit. this bit... okay here, i found a pun for sans! yay! like i've said, these puns are very hard for me to work in. now that being said, i did not, in fact, need to give the idiot's guide to surface-mount soldering and electronics repair in here. a lot of this section should be cut down; it runs very nearly too long and for not much gain. I don't need this many words to show that sans is a) technical, b) able to do electronics repair, and c) not an electronic engineer. 

> Sans cracks the box open and, for a small miracle, finds the problem almost immediately. Well, he finds a couple problems, because of course there's never just one. Blown emergency fuse, that's easy enough to fix. A jumper to the output seems to have snapped loose. And there, one thirty-two pin chip gone all brown and fried from the release of its magic smoke.

Okay so this is a joke that I like a lot at least. See, the engineering joke is that integrated circuit chips run on magic smoke, because once you see smoke coming out of them, the chip won't work anymore. Because you've let the magic smoke out. But because this is Undertale, who's to say that this isn't literal magic smoke? 

I specifically picked a thirty-two pin chip because that's going to be a pain in the ass to deal with. 

> He can't even see the part number on the chip, so he goes to the schematic, then starts rummaging for a replacement. Okay, so was the short caused by user error or design flaw? 
> 
> Eh, whatever. He'll just assume user error because the alternative is more work, and work outside of his field. So just replace the fuse, jumper, and the chip, and this should be fine. Well, fine is probably a strong word, but he should be able to get some life out of the adapter long enough to get the readings he needs.
> 
> Sans comes up out of his pocket, finally, with a bag of potato chips. Despite himself, he chuckles, tosses the bag aside, and goes in again, this time getting a shielded bag holding rows of microchips and a few other odds and ends he'd need to pop the dud.

too much detail, but i like the potato chip gag. 

> He plugs in the soldering iron then looks to the grill while he waits. Glances to the package of hot dogs. Then he sighs, and picks up his spool of solder, rotating it until he affirms that _yes_ , there really is quite a lot of lead and magical goop in there, and he probably shouldn't be putting on another hot dog while he's working with the stuff. He considers it anyway, and just tests the iron's temperature in the snow instead. The sharp _hiss_ tells him he's ready to go on this anyway.
> 
> Thirty-two tiny legs set against thirty-two tiny pads. Thirty-two times he brings the iron in, along with a twist of copper braid, and gets the chip that much looser. After thirty-two, he comes in with a pair of tweezers and pulls the chip away with a single firm tug. He puts it aside, then cleans off the bare contacts, scrubs them with a wad of steel wool. Everything looks intact and good to go once that's taken care of.
> 
> But that's the easy part. He opens the bag of components and slides out a tiny rectangle of foam. The difference between the chips is like snow and steam. The old one is dead, brown and burnt. The new one has a lustre beneath the surface, makes the air around him somehow smell more real. Not a temporally-sensitive component, no. But it definitely exists in two different places at the same time, for now.

so coming up with an equivalent to 'night and day' for a place where there's no sun is actually really hard. Anyway, yep, still need to go at these paragraphs with an axe. this is a fully accurate description of how to desolder a thirty-two pin microchip from a circuitboard, but does it really need to be here? no. no it does not. 

> His vision stains amber on the left side as he grips the chip with his tweezers and sets it down onto the circuit board, twice. It might exist in two places at once, but if you work very quickly and very carefully, you can make those places the same, just a few degrees out of phase with one another.

Because here's the part where it actually starts being interesting, and we're how far in? So we've got Sans working some heavy-duty temporospatial magic here, making this chip exist twice at once within the same space and time. Or something like that. The part that a reader needs to know is in the paragraph below. 

> And Sans needs to try to measure two things that exist in the same place at the same time. An ozone scent fills the air as he works, adhering chip to board with lead and magic and only some duospatial manipulation. Sweat beads up on his skull as he tags each little metal foot with the solder, a soft distorted hiss rising over the sounds of the grill.

So we know from Hysteresis that Sans suspects there's two entities resident in Frisk's body. Could possibly have stated that more outright, either here or back in Hysteresis but I thiiiink it's clear enough by this point. 

> He's a little dizzy when he finishes the thirty-second, but he leans back and takes a deep breath of the icy air when it's over.
> 
> Everything else is cake, at least: the fuse swaps without any trouble at all, and a fresh length of wire replaces the dead jumper. He checks for circuit continuity and everything looks good, but right now he can only test on the mundane level.
> 
> Still, should do, should do. He screws the box back together and pockets his improbably large amount of equipment. 
> 
> Sans checks his phone. Tch. Still three hours on shift. The eternal question, then: nap, or hot dog? He bends to dip his hands in the snow, shaking the cold off as he lifts them. Another hot dog, while the grill's still hot.

This past bit is fine. Though here is a detail I either could have elaborated or cut: hands in the snow is to wash them. Because lead-based solder. And some sort of magic stuff which probably you don't want getting into your mouth. Anyway lead poisoning is no joke.

> He's just tossed it on when he hears heavy footsteps off in the forest, townside. He tilts his head that direction, listening. Sounds like a pair. He adds a couple more 'dogs to the grill, just in case. He'll give them a good home if he's wrong.
> 
> The footsteps draw closer as he pops his bun on the grill. Up the path, two very distinct armoured figures appear, tromping up the path. Bunny ears and dragon fins bob in the air, shaking snow loose from the shorter trees.
> 
> "Hey guys," says Sans, nodding to the royal guards. He retrieves his hot dog bun and adds two more buns to the grill. "You're a long way from Hotland. 'Sup?"
> 
> "Hey Sans," says 01. "Like, Undyne's sent us on a mission." He looks around nervously, back at his partner. "Well, you know what happened here a while back, right?"

Okay these guys are pretty off-voice because I'm an idiot who doesn't check references on minor characters. whoops! unfortunately this convo is critical exposition. otherwise undyne comes out of nowhere. need to rework all this dialogue.

> "He must've, bro," says 02. "It's his post and all. Hurry up and ask him. I don't wanna stay put out here."
> 
> Sans slathers the condiments on his bun. "Fill me in? Couldn't hurt to... ketchup." He waits a beat, shrugs when he doesn't get the laugh, and adds an additional squeeze's worth of emphasis with the ketchup bottle. "You want a hot dog? Either of you?"
> 
> The guards look to each other, and they both shrug. "Sure," says 01. "It's about that human that was running around last month. Like, your brother hasn't managed to capture it, and the local guards are,  uh, gone."
> 
> Sans pushes the condiments across the stand and pops the hot dogs in the buns. "Hey, one of these's a hot cat. That's lucky, which of you wants it?" 02 raises his hand, and Sans passes it over, letting 01 take the regular ''dog. "I remember what happened. It was... yeah. But everyone who did get evacuated is back now. What's up?"
> 
> "That's what's up. Undyne's worried," says 02, avoiding the ketchup (philistine) and just applying mustard to his hot cat. "No one's found a trace of the human. If it's still around and everyone's back, that could be real bad. You haven't seen anything suspicious, have you?"
> 
> Sans takes a bite out of his own hot dog to buy himself a minute. Well, he knew something like this was coming. Figured it might have been one of Snowdin's residents letting Undyne know, but apparently he's managed to keep a lid on things there for now. On the other hand, nothing can really hide the full extent of the damage, not that he'd even want to. "No humans running around in the shadows around here, if that's what you mean," says Sans after he swallows. "Not that I've noticed. It's been quiet as a t... yeah, let's not go there. Anyway, it's been quiet. Maybe a little too quiet. I dunno." So long as they're looking in the forest, things should be fine, he figures. Cleanup's pretty much done; Sans just has to start returning the dust and, yeah, he's been putting that off. Of course he has. "Sorry, guys."
> 
> "Worth a shot," says 01, eating his hot dog. "Let us know if you, like, see anything? Or pass it on to Undyne?"
> 
> "Sure," says Sans. He finishes his hot dog. "But I think it's time for my union-regulated break right now. Swing by Grillby's while you're in the area sometime, I'll buy you burgers. Be nice to have some new faces in the place. You guys should relax some anyway. Let your hair down."
> 
> The two guards head off with a little more exchange of pleasantries. Sans starts tearing down the grill before they've vanished from sight, taking his time about the whole thing. The nanosecond they're gone, Sans stashes the grill under the counter, puts his condiments away, and pushes away from the lookout post. He heads in the opposite direction as the guards, taking a shortcut home.

so yeah, not much to say here but the reason for that is because again, all of the dialogue except sans' needs to be reworked with a goddamn dialogue reference open augh

* * *

> "Hey, uh, it's me again."
> 
> "Can't I just call to say hey?"
> 
> "... okay, yeah, fair. You're right, and I do need something. I don't think you're gonna like this one, either."
> 
> "Well, after that last chat, I figured I did have some things I could look into on my end. And I do, but, uh, I need some controls."
> 
> "You should have it already. Just... might need to dig some, that's all. One sec and I'll send you what I need."
> 
> "I know. I know. Do you think I-- I'm gonna have to put you down, hold on."

so here's where i decided to do something with the matching bit in nobody home. spoilers, that having been chara pov is a complete retcon, lol.

>   
>  _Caught!_ It stumbles away from the door like it's made of fire, forcing this worthless body in the correct directions. But it's too slow, and the door creaks open, the strange miasma that lurks around the cracks dissipating. From the darkness, the short skeleton emerges, lingering at the doorway. He looks down at it, left eye blazing blue like a searchlight. Does it always do that? It scrambles at its corroded memory, but its work has been too thorough and the vessel too damaged to retain that much.

So here I've finally firmly decided on 'it' for Chara POV stuff. Thing about this sort of limited POV is that there's no external observer; we're coming out of the POV character's head. Chara uses 'it' for Frisk, too, you'll note, and explicitly generally refers to Frisk as you would an object. Chara goes out of their way to do this, as it happens. It's intentional, not something they're doing casually.

So. It's not an external narrator referring to Chara as 'it' here-- in Human the external narrator was absolutely possible-- it's _Chara themself_  using 'it' to refer to themself. They're severing connections, every connection they can, including their own, to humanity, to personhood. They want to finish the job they tried to start before Asriel stopped them, and they want to continue the trajectory that ends in the genocide ending even if they're not in that LOVE-ful state yet.

But it's very hard to destroy all humans if you consider yourself one, to destroy the world if you feel a part of it. Chara's trying to destroy Frisk's self, sure. But they're trying to destroy their own, too, and they're doing a better job of it there, because they're not fighting back.

We'll talk more about the usage of 'they' for Frisk's own narration when they get that; it's something other than simply 'Frisk is nonbinary', though in the end they necessarily have a rather fluid gender, and, one assumes that the accord generally splits the difference and habitually uses 'they'. Sans uses 'they' because he has no particular inclination to gender a human.

So part of why Chara doesn't know if they've seen blue-eye Sans before is because they've done damage to Frisk's memory, which already isn't that hot. But it's also because Frisk does not, by habit, look anyone in the eye. There's also the bit from last time with them keeping the eyes out of focus.

> "Heya, kiddo," says the skeleton. He stifles a yawn but the light of patience shines steady and eternal, an inscrutable dare. "You need something?"

of course sans fucking well knows something's up. he's sure as hell not going to let anything on, either.

>   
>  _Look pathetic!_  But it doesn't know how to look pathetic, and the wildly thrashing soul inside its body is making it harder to try. It manages to look down at its feet, contort its face into a hangdog expression. The blue light dies when it shakes its head, the motion jerky as the vessel struggles to move some other way.
> 
> A memory of its own rises unbidden, stained in golden sunlight. Asriel never fought this much, even when he did wrest control for those critical moments. But Asriel was a monster, with a monster's soul, and no matter how damaged this vessel's mind was even before it fell, the soul within is still a human's, with a human's resilience.
> 
> Inconvenient. And an inconvenient memory. It cannot leave that one lying around. Like a thumb through chalk dust, it destroys the thoughts, the connections.

fuck me but this hurt to write. they were not feels that I expected, but they were feels that were very much there.

> A moment of perverted sentimentality leads it to keep the name for itself, though it no longer knows why. But the name nestles deep inside its pulsing black heart as if it belongs there.

So you may or may not have noticed that I really love taking canon lines and repurposing them. I was definitely realizing by here that going full demon on this wasn't going to work. ... so perverted sentimentality is turned back against the original speaker. If you assume that the speaker at the end of genocide is the same as the person Chara, and I think not, so much; endgame genocide Chara is much more of a meta-entity. but you know this story takes the position that they're not the same being, because endgame genocide chara would never turn that phrase against themself; the text of the game makes that very clear.

anyway if you go back to the original summary, beneath the joke one, there's a bit of obfuscated text. 'something precious/worthless is saved'. the strikeout on precious is a clue it's something Chara's doing. The precious thing is Asriel's name, of course.

> Its hands start to tremble. Not long now before it's driven back. Won't be worth it to try for a reset right now; the vessel's grip is too tight. Best to withdraw, resume the attack, keep hammering at cracks until it can leverage enough determination.
> 
> The skeleton scratches an itch, and says, "Well, if you say so. Careful hanging out outside of doors, kiddo. If I was Papyrus, I coulda tripped on you. I'd tell you to ask about the story behind that one, but, you know. I know how it is for you." He jams his hands in his pockets, eyes going dark. "Anyway, it's good to respect people's privacy."

that's a fucking threat is what that is

> Breaks to the surface, tries not to gasp for air. Where? Turns head around, tries to get bearings. Upstairs, yes, and not alone. What happened? Catches fingers on wall, tries to get steady.
> 
> Fingerbones on shoulder, not heavy. "Can you get downstairs okay? There's a thing of cookies in the kitchen. Go get them down, we'll have a snack. Gimme five, ten minutes tops. You seem like you could use some time to yourself."

So yeah, Sans can very very easily tell when the switchover happens because there's such a world of difference in the body language. It's very, very obvious.

> Gently pushed away. Looks back and up. Makes a tiny nod. Comes easily, without a fight. Puts hand on wall, follows it to the stairs.

* * *

> The worst part is that if he'd done his setup fifteen minutes ago, that would have been a prime opportunity to get his readings. That was a neat trick the 'kid' pulled, listening at his door. That should be impossible, without some sort of spatial desync. But the moment's passed, and now he's going to have to resort to some special work.

man i'd call being able to reset/reload/save/etc as being at least somewhat of a metatemporospatial thing so yeah. 

> So, current hypothesis: the anomaly is formed by two independent entities forming some sort of antigestalt in the same space at the same time. Probably the levels of determination inherent to the human soul is a factor, but that's why he's needing readings. The mechanical dirty bits clearly aren't going to crack just from thinking about it.

so, 'antigestalt'. that's a very critical word and it is, for once, a very accurate word. So a gestalt entity is one whose existence is a unified whole, greater than the sum of its component parts, that cannot be separated into those parts. Therefore an antigestalt being is one whose parts are ripping the whole apart.

> Sans shortcuts downstairs and outside, pulls a key from his pocket, silver with edges that cut space like diamond. He lets out a breath, watches it frost in the air. He doesn't watch his fingers tremble as he shoves the key into the lock and twists it in two different directions at the same time.
> 
> He steps inside as quickly as he ever moves, and shoves the door shut behind him.
> 
> Of course Sans is aquainted with hate. Still, he avoids doing it whenever he can; it's pretty much only good for angrying up the marrow, and despite everything he still has better things to do with his time than hate much of anything. Hate takes  _effort_.

'angry up the blood' is a phrase of which i am fond, but of course Sans doubly has no blood, being both monster and skeleton. This line started out with him talking about hating all this. But he's Sans. He doesn't hate, that takes work.

> So he doesn't hate being here. But he really doesn't enjoy being in this room. Or the sterility of the place. He doesn't even want to consider  _that thing_ in the corner, sort of wistfully dislikes the picture in the drawer that only exists _in potentia_ , never really wants to think about the oppressive crush of good memories that can never be reclaimed-- if would ever even exist.

thissssssss line. hoo boy, here's where i admit that i didn't realize for a while that the picture didn't appear until after a completed true pacifist. I think I recovered anyway, with the closing shot, but ideally I would rework this.

> No way back. But is this a way forward, finally? Who knows. But it's something to do while he's in this limbo of waiting for everything to be snatched away. He imagines he'll miss the kid, the flashes of them he sees anyway, but once this timeline snaps free, he won't really exist anymore, will he? Another Sans will take over.

change 'forward' to 'out' to match the final piece. or change the final piece's title from 'out' to 'forward', either or.

So this bit has its roots in the speech you get if you hit the second half of the genocide fight with Sans, after having gotten dunked on. 'then i guess we never really were friends. don't tell that to all the other sans-es' or however that went. Clearly he doesn't view them as the same as himself.

> Cheery. Sans pulls out his scope and probe and starts setting up, rigging a wireless connection between the filament-thin antenna that serves as probe and his newly-repaired adapter. 
> 
> The next bit takes only a wisp of concentration: he graps the antenna at the base between thumbs and forefingers, and he  _twists_ , working the space loose until the probe exists in two places at once. He sets it up in opposite ends of the room. That should do for getting a clear reading; the floor above shouldn't cause any worrisome interference, not with the signals he's tracking.
> 
> Sans flicks the scope on and fiddles with the view settings until he affirms that his repair job will get him at least something readable. And that he's  _definitely_ onto something with the multiple occupancy theory. Even if one of these waves is... really weird, jumping all in directions that it shouldn't be possible to jump. But a quick bout of troubleshooting suggests that it's actually the reading, not just a botched repair job on the adapter. 
> 
> Spectrum analysis can come later, though. And the control data could reveal that sort of distortion as being perfectly normal. Could. Probably won't. But that's what controls are for. He scrawls out a few initial notes out before plugging in save parameters on the readings. Good enough for now; he can check back later no problem. And there's cookies to be had. Cookies are important.

so what he's drawing here is the graph that's attached to this one. multiple occupancy, ie, multiple beings in the same body. the control data he needs is off cases where that's known to be what's going on, ie, amalgamates. Hence why alphys was clearly not happy, even if we didn't get her half of the convo.

anyway, lingering a bit too much on the technicals here. could be tighter. should be tighter.

> He makes sure the door's locked, and returns to his room, so his entrance downstairs looks at least a little bit normal.

* * *

> Sits by the table. Has the cookies out, just like asked. Waits. Not sure how long it takes. But alone, with nobody coming. Nobody ever coming. Nobody ever came.
> 
> Except once. Memory bleeds into view, but foggy. Face pressed into flowers. Everything hurts. Eyes full of tears. Throat raw and screaming something, doesn't know what, until something strangles--

because it's face pressed into flowers, this is them remembering the fragments of Chara's soul latching on. it hurts and they're screaming, because, well, uh, it was a fatal fall from a height.

> "Hey, kiddo, sorry about the wait. You didn't have any trouble finding the cookies?" Bony hand squeezes arm, lets go, passes by. Fridge opens. Fridge closes. Soft blue blur comes back, sits down, drops milk carton on table. Slides cookies over, opens bag.
> 
> Shakes head. Moves a little too easily, feels nervous by that. Still scared about earlier. Still doesn't know what happened. Listening, maybe? But couldn't hear anything at all. Rubs forehead with hand. Kind of sore still. But better.

the injury to the front of the head is the one from nobody home. it's the back of the head that's got the permanent damage going on. so they're so very used to fighting for control that it's a bit of a red flag when it's easy. which means all chara needs to do to freak out Frisk is just back off for a while.

then too, like I said, Chara backs off before attacking, usually.

> Sort of wishes it wasn't. Sort of wishes that wish would go away. Kind of wants cookie. Isn't good to want things. Sneaks a look, watches hands pull cookies out of tray, milk get sloshed in.

never was quite sure how to handle these deep-pov self esteem issues and worse. I think I did okay? but it's hard for me to tell if I'm doing it right because I've been lucky enough that I've never had self-esteem problems, and never any serious desires to cause harm to myself, or anything else. Other issues, to be sure, but not those.

Anyway Sans here is doing noted internet lifehack: fill the middle tray with milk rather than using cups to dunk.

> Hand slides cookies over,  sleeve drags in milk. Tray pushed closer, too. "There you go, kid. Can you reach okay?"
> 
> Blinks, looks at cookies. Bites lip, waits until cookies get slid closer. Cheeks go hot. Lifts hand, works fingers in same direction, picks up top cookie. Steals look long enough to get nodded at. Lifts other hand, takes other side of cookie. Pulls sides apart. Licks the inside. Tastes so sweet, can't help but smile. Sticks sides back together.

Okay now imagine Sans doing the whole next chapter with a sleeve slightly damp from milk. Anyway, usual encouraging frisk stuff, getting them used to nice things like cookies, etc.

> "Heh, heh." Fingerbones rattle, pulling attention upward. "Classic technique. But watch this. I'll do it slow for ya." Cookie gets lifted, rolls across back of bony hand. Flips into air, spins-- counts, one, two, three times-- drops into milk. Splashes.

i'm not saying sans fooling around with cookies is this story's lone 'get dunked on' joke but it absolutely is this story's lone 'get dunked on' joke. anything more overt than this would have been too much for me.

> Giggles until it hurts, throat all sore. Shouldn't be giggling. Not with everything. Stops it, looks down. Looks back up. Sees a sigh.
> 
> "It's okay to laugh, kid. Well, I guess that takes some time to learn. But it's okay for you to laugh. And like cookies." Reaches out and fishes out cookie from milk, pops it into mouth. "Eh, you'll get there. You're getting there."
> 
> Nods, sighs. Isn't really smart enough to get it, isn't really good enough to believe it. Keeps getting easier anyway. If you were good, you'd feel badly. Probably just rotten all the way through. Picks up next cookie. Pulls apart. Licks. Watches cookie get dunked, eaten. Thinks of something weird. Makes a sound. "Um."
> 
> "What's up?"
> 
> Squints. Tries to see better. Tries to figure out words. Tries to make tongue go right ways. "Um. Where..." Closes eyes. What next? Long word. Plan how tongue moves. Move hard in case it fights. "Cookie go?" Two at once! Smiles. If you weren't so stupid, two words at once wouldn't be special. Loses smile. But every word a fight. Shouldn't have to be. Doesn't have to be. Can just... no, would rather fight.

this bit... this conversation is surprisingly loaded down with importance. one is that it's pretty important to have Frisk get into, like, at least one ordinary-kid conversation before everything goes to shit, to show to the reader that an ordinary kid does exist in here. another is mostly tangential but i do like nailing down questions that I think are very silly and pointless like 'where does the food go if a skeleton eats it' because the answer is clearly 'uh, _magic_ , duh'. another, you know, you want the casual depiction of the way magic just _is_  for monsters.

also we've got some chara in here too. They're not trying very hard; mostly just reminding frisk they're there.

> "That's kinda personal, isn't it?" But doesn't wait long enough to feel bad about. "Kidding, kidding. But I dunno how to explain it. Let me try and remember what they taught us in school."
> 
> Tummy flips at last word. Remembers something-- fingers caught in metal door, fist on cheek, metal crashes from head hitting-- whose? Doesn't remember, remembers pain, bites lip hard, wants to reach to remember things, doesn't want to know what they are. Yelling, fighting, fists everywhere. Hands on shoulders, pulling back. Can't picture faces. Doesn't know names. Screaming all through head. Keeps mouth shut. Wants to listen. Can't listen.

the trick here is the way it uses Frisk's tangled POV to very specifically avoid saying who's beating up who. If you reallllly feel like reading into things, there's the fact that there's no mention of pain specifically in relation to the actual actions (fingers, head, etc). I'd probably actually delete that 'remembers pain' bit now, just to make it a bit clearer, for people reading closely.

> Bad memory soothed away like dust, all warm nothing left behind. No more noise, why was there noise? Head doesn't hurt, for once. Easy to listen to words now. Missed some of it. Wants to not have. Too late for that now.

thissss one confused people but it stays because it's important. it's critical, even. why would chara stop the bad memory, and there's a couple reasons here. One goes back to severing connections again. Cutting Frisk loose and all. The other is that Chara's really doing the same thing the text very loosely implies they did to Asriel, and making Frisk dependent on them.

> "... so, uh, I guess it's magic. It's a kind of law, it's got a name and math that goes with it, don't remember it offhand. But the gist is that for ordinary stuff like that, the less you think about it, the better it works. Food gets eaten, Grillby doesn't throw me out for doing the mop trick again. Hey, wanna see something cool?"

a skeleton walks into a bar, orders a beer and a mop, you know sans has done this

> Nods, curious now. Doesn't know anything at _all_  about magic. Headache comes back slowly, at the edges. Has to work a little to move head, move hands.
> 
> Picks up another cookie, holds it out so it's easy to see. Pops it in mouth. Cookie drops right through. Gets caught. Pops it in again. "Heh, see. Just think about it, and it stops working. Convenient, huh?"
> 
> Could try another word. Might be able to get a word out? Wriggles tongue into place. Says, "Y-yeah."
> 
> Leans across table, puts hand on shoulder, fingerbones squeeze tight. Feels warm, different sort of warm than in the head. "Good kid."
> 
> Still isn't used to that. Still isn't used to hearing good. Isn't good. But just wrong, not lying. That means you're the one who's lying. Sad to think of that. Doesn't want to lie. Doesn't want to disappoint. Going to anyway. Always does. Say something, maybe? Not sure. Bites lip. Doesn't want to argue. Reaches for cookie instead. Looks down at it. Puts it in milk and waits.

again, chara's just not trying very hard here, they don't _know_  undyne's coming but they just got beat back by Frisk just now, they don't need to do much to keep Frisk on their toes.

* * *

> Sans dunks his demonstration cookie and watches the kid as he waits for the bubbles to stop. It's subtle, but the kid's getting more expression on their face all the time. Is that a good sign? Or a bad one? Dunno. Poor kid. The way they light up at just the hint of praise, only for that light to snuff out within seconds... he's got no idea what to do with that.

doin' his best though. anyway this pov change is a bit jarring but clearly this conversation/sequence of events would not work from frisk's pov. still not 100% satisfied with the flow though, might be another way to work it.

> Cookies seem to help, at least. That much's universal.
> 
> They munch cookies more or less in silence, demolishing most of the tray and soaking up the milk. Sans considers refilling it and taking care of the last of the cookies but he's not all that hungry anymore, and the kid doesn't seem super interested in going for more. He's about to go suggest they go watch TV when the front door opens.
> 
> Papyrus runs inside, shutting the door tight behind him. The kid looks ready to slide down underneath their chair even before Papyrus makes it to the kitchen. "Sans! Sans! Oh my god! I've left you five messages! Why aren't you picking up!"

I rely a little too much on people not picking up the phone. this time's fine because of course sans never picks up the goddamn phone. later, i kind of paint myself into a corner over this.

> Sans raises his brow ridge. "Just hanging out with the kid here," he says, waving at the slinking kid. "Didn't want any interruptions or anything. What's up?"
> 
> Papyrus paces a tight circle around the kitchen, practically wringing his hands. "I was having my daily meeting with Undyne and she was asking about what happened with the human and why I hadn't found them yet! Sans, it's really important you pick up your phone when people call!"
> 
> The kid plops onto the floor, knees pulling up to their chest. They wrap their arms around their legs, and press their forehead to their knees.
> 
>   
>  _Too slow._  Damn it. Sans leans back, picks up another cookie. He rubs his thumb over the pattering on the outer layer of the sandwich. "Makes sense she'd be interested. What'd you tell her?" Oh, Papyrus, and his giant heart. Of course Undyne wouldn't let up on him, especially if she's investigating Snowdin now. Not after what happened. He should have known he'd be on a clock for this investigation.

like the header says, mistakes are made.

> Papyrus looks every single direction but directly at Sans or the human. "Um. Well, she might have. Insisted. On asking what I'd been doing. I didn't want to disappoint her! I tried to explain so she wouldn't be so, so murder-y! But that just made her want to murder more!"
> 
> Time to switch to damage control. Sans glances under the table, making sure the kid's just saying put there. "Okay," he says. "We can work something out, I guess. Just how far behind you is she?"
> 
> The front door crashes open.

annnnnd we end on a cheap cliffhanger.

* * *

okay so the doodles are just doodles. one notes here that the "??? + kid = anomaly" is probably incorrect given ??? = chara, who is the only one acting, hmm, anomalous. and that discounts flowey's activities as well.

so this graph is intensely fucked up. channels are noted as 'ax' and 'bx' rather than channel 1 and channel 2 like on a normal damn scope because theoretically they're measuring the same thing, the same thing just happens to be like doubly occupying the same space. we have one like, channel ax, which looks fine; this is probably Frisk's, since they do have a complete and mostly-intact soul.

channel bx, however, which is probably chara, has a lot of weird-ass shit going on with it. for one, it's choked before it can hit peaks, and the points where it should peak it instead drops to basically nothing. then that downslope, it's at up to three places at the same time. The specifics aren't terribly important, but this is: only one of these souls is actually showing signs of being in more than one place at the same time. this is sort of a lead-up to the 'frisk can't [consciously] save' bit.

the text is mostly just sans talking to himself and confirming that this wacky reading isn't equipment error.

I used like five pens on this graph.


End file.
